Climate change intensifies European supercell thunderstorms

Researchers from the University of Bern and ETH Zurich have shown that climate change (at +3°C global warming) will intensify and increase the frequency of supercell thunderstorms in Europe, especially in the Alpine region.

• Main finding and simulation details: The study projects up to 52% more supercell storms north of the Alps and 36% more on the southern slopes at +3°C, with an overall 11% increase across Europe; the simulation reports about 38 supercell thunderstorms per season north of the Alps and 61 on the southern slopes, uses a 2.2 km model resolution, and is based on an 11-year simulation compared with real storm data from 2016–2021.
• Background, project and model limits: The work was conducted within the scClim project (funded by SNSF) involving ETH Zurich, University of Bern, Agroscope and MeteoSwiss; the model captures storms larger than 2.2 km and lasting longer than one hour, omitting smaller/shorter events, and finds regional declines (e.g., Iberian Peninsula and southwest France).