Windstorms in the Czech Lands during the past 500 years
Funding:
- Czech Science Foundation
Principal investigator:
- Rudolf Brázdil (Institute of Geograpy, Masaryk University)
Co-investigators:
- Péter Szabó (Institute of Botany, CAS)
- Radim Tolasz (Czech Hydrometeorological Insitute)
Time-frame:
- 2015–2017
Project description:
Windstorms may be ranked with floods and droughts as the most serious of weather extremes to lead to material damage and loss of human life. A combination of windstorm information from various documentary historical climatology sources for the pre-instrumental period, and modern strong wind events extracted from wind speed measurements and calculations of storminess based on sea-level-pressure fields in the instrumental period will be used to compile a 500-year chronology of windstorms and their impacts in the Czech Lands. This chronology will then be employed to derive important trends in windstorms and to study their spatio-temporal variability in frequency, magnitude, seasonality, synoptic causes, climatic influences and impacts. We will pay particular attention to the analysis of the effects of windstorms on the past and present development of forests in Moravia and Silesia. The overall aim of the project is to present a comprehensive synthesis of windstorms past, present and future (including their impacts on forests) in the Czech Lands.