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The Spatial Analysis of Hazard of Spring Thunderstorms in Iran
Yosef Ghavidel Rahimi, Parasto Baghebanan, Manuchehr Farajzadeh,
Volume 1, Issue 3 (10-2014)
Abstract

Thunderstorm is one of the most severe atmospheric disturbances in the world and also in Iran, which is characterized by rapid upward movements, abundant moisture, and climatic instability. Since this phenomenon is usually accompanied with hail, lightning, heavy rain, flood and severe winds, it can cause irreparable damage to the environment. Investigation of spring thunderstorms has a great significance regarding the irreparable damages can cause by them and also because of the higher frequency of this phenomenon in the spring and the necessity for preparedness and disaster mitigation actions. To identify the locations of the major thunderstorm risk areas, the entire country with an area of 1648195 square kilometers, which is located between the 25°-40° north latitude and 44°-63° east longitude is considered.     Spatial distribution of the occurrence of hazardous spring thunderstorms was analyzed using a series of monthly thunderstorm frequency data obtained from 25 synoptic stations over a 51-year-long period (1960-2010). Ward's hierarchical clustering and Kriging methods were used for statistical analysis. Initially, total number of thunderstorms in April, May and June were considered as the frequency of occurrence of thunderstorm in different stations in the spring. Measure of central tendency and dispersion which consists of the sum, minimum, maximum, range and coefficient of variation, standard deviation, and skewness were used to clarify the changes of thunderstorms and to determine the spatial and temporal climatic distribution of spring thunderstorms. An appropriate probability distribution function was chosen to determine the distributions of the data.  Due to the large volume of data and the uneven distribution of stations, cluster analysis and kriging methods were used to classify different regions into homogeneous groups for zoning and spatial analysis of spring thunderstorms, respectively. The statistical characteristics of spring thunderstorms were reviewed and fitted with a 3-parameter Weibull distribution. Regions considered for this study were classified in four separate clusters according to the simultaneity of thunderstorms in the spring. After zoning, it was found that the highest rates of thunderstorm took place in the northwest and west of country. The northeast of Iran has the second highest number of thunderstorm occurrence. The least number of thunderstorm event had happened in the central and southern half of the country.     According to the descriptive statistics parameters, maximum number of thunderstorms occurred in May.. Based on the results of the cluster analysis, there is a similar trend in the central and eastern regions, the rest of the country was clustered into five distinct homogeneous regions, including the northwestern, western, southern, northern, central northern and northeastern regions. Zoning results indicate that the highest number of the occurrence of this phenomenon in the country is concentrated in the northwestern and western regions. Higher frequency of occurrence of thunderstorms in the northwestern and western regions may be attributed to local topographic conditions like high mountains, orientation of the terrain, solar radiation on slopes and existence instability conditions, hillside convection, the presence of water resources and specific climatic conditions in these areas. In addition, as a result of a continuous surface obtained by the method of interpolation with the least amount of systematic error and also the use of correlation functions for recognizing the spatial structure of the data and estimating the model error when using the Kriging method, the weights are chosen in order to have a more optimized interpolation function. Also the cluster analysis may significantly reduce the volume of operation without affecting the results and will help in finding a real band due to more appropriate classification of different geographic areas with greater spatial homogeneity and minimal variance within the group. Based on the results of the spatial analysis, it is clear that Kriging and Ward cluster analysis methods are appropriate for thunderstorm zoning and classification of different regions according to occurrence of thunderstorm, respectively.


The Study of regional structure of atmosphere during the thunderstorm hail event on16 to 18 July 2016 Case study: North West of Iran
Ali Mohammad Khorshiddoust, Mehdi Asadi, Hassan Hajimohammadi ,
Volume 4, Issue 2 (7-2017)
Abstract
Thunderstorms are among the first meteorological phenomena, which have attracted human attention. Thunderstorms with rain showers and storms accompanied by hail and their role in causing sudden floods, both in terms of agriculture and human and financial losses, have been noticed by researchers. Rain hail of bullets or pieces of ice ascends very high in elevation due to the weather conditions along with electrical features occurrence. Hail grains or pieces of ice with diameters of 5 to 50 mm occasionally take longer time to be made up. Strong growth of hail through severe and repeated vertical movements of air in cumulonimbus clouds freezes the absorbed water droplets around hailstones. Few thunderstorm hails arrive on land many of which even contain no hail even in the most suitable parts of the clouds. The creation and hail falling, despite being warm and humid in the lower atmosphere and the ascending of clouds condensed with respect to the altitude and cold weather are coupled with the continuing maximum air instability. Because of the importance of hail event, studies on the formation and growth of hail in different countries are conducted for its prediction. In connection with hail and hail storms extensive research work has been carried out in including: Costa et al. (2001), Simonov and Gergiev (2003), Whiteman (2003) and Sterling (2003).
To investigate the thunderstorm and hails occurred in the region, we examined weather conditions. Initially the values of pressure, temperature and dew point temperature by the radiosonde measurements in different layers of the atmosphere were studied and the plotted graphs were obtained from NOAA. In the next stage for a closer look at weather conditions parameters like air temperature (Air), sea level pressure (SLP), geo-potential height (Hgt), specific humidity (Shum), vertical velocity (Omega) orbital wind component (Uwnd) and meridional wind component (Vwnd) were analyzed. The data records were collected from the website of the National Center for Environmental Prediction and National Climate Science (NCEP/NCAR). Instability investigation in the atmosphere for different levels of instability indices was applied.
Investigation on instability indices showed that on the first day the ascending index values (LI) were at 2-, which are the values added in the next two days. These conditions prove that the atmospheric turbulence is intensified in the days after the first day. By examining the thickness of the atmosphere it is seen on the Azerbaijan area On 16 July that on 5785 geo-potential meters the next day was associated with reduced 51 meter geo-potential added value at the third day. The results also revealed that the atmospheric precipitation of water values is calculated on a three-day index value of 17, 18 and more than 23 mm per day. To check the status of stormy weather index (SWEA) and K we found that the occurrence of thunderstorms in that area started on 16 July, approaching the end of high value added indicators that show strengthening of storms and their destructive mechanism in the day after the end of the other.
 
Investigation of thermodynamic charts showed that rapid convective ascent of available potential energy depending on the weather in the region has been so high and caused the weather to approach three days in advance to the upper layers of the atmosphere and atmospheric turbulence was created for the region. Examining the rainfall map of geo-potential height and vortices in 500 hPa on the first day exhibited that tthunderstorms were the result of interactions of the atmosphere, so that in middle levels the strong condensation of location with a range of more than 25 degrees of latitude on Caspian Sea was created and polar latitudes spread to nearby areas. On the second day, high-altitude thunderstorm in the core atmospheric cut-off formed on the Caspian Sea on the East of Turkey, northern Iraq and North West of Iran created the geo-potential height of the center of the 5750 geopotential meter. On the third day, atmospheric cut-off core to cut area of low pressure was made on the maximum positive vortices in the climate system. Conditions over the surface in the first day of the storm in the region indicated very strong contour of low pressure formed in the North East to West and North West of Saudi Arabia. In front of the two sides one of on Mediterranean Sea and other northern Russia, the contour of the pressure was imported into the Middle East.

Analysis of Thunderstorm Instability Indexes in Iran using Reanalysis Data
Dr. Firouz Mojarrad, Mrs. Samira Koshki, Dr. Jafar Masompour, Dr. Morteza Miri,
Volume 4, Issue 4 (1-2018)
Abstract
Thunderstorm is a destructive atmospheric phenomenon, which annually causes a lot of damage to various parts of human activities. Due to the accompaniment of thunderstorm with rainstorm and hail and its effective role in creating sudden floods, the analysis of the behavior of this hazard has been widely studied both in terms of agriculture and in terms of financial and life damages throughout the world. The study of thunderstorm as a hazardous atmospheric phenomenon using instability indexes in Iran has been less considered due to lack of observation stations. Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) and Vertical Wind Shear (VWS) are two indexes that are often used to describe and detect thunderstorm environments. This study evaluates the thunderstorms in Iran with reanalysis data using CAPE and VWS indexes.
Thunderstorm data in 7 different conditions at 8 times a day for 42 synoptic and upper air stations during a 37-year common period (1980-2016) was received from the Iranian Meteorological Organization. At first, frequency, trend and time of occurrence of thunderstorms in Iran were investigated during the statistical period. Then, the ERA-Interim reanalysis dataset of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) with spatial resolution of 0.5 ° was used for the analysis of thunderstorms. To evaluate the ERA-Interim dataset, the CAPE and VWS values for the 80 selected thunderstorm events that were calculated using the RAOB software were compared with ERA data and their accuracy was confirmed. After confirming the accuracy of ERA data, the average values of CAPE and VWS indexes in 42 stations of the country were calculated based on 4,542 thunderstorm events at 00 and 12 GMT during the study period, and the maps of these two indexes were drawn up using the IDW method. Then, using an equation, the thunderstorm severity thresholds across the country were determined using ERA data with 4,542 thunderstorm events to distinguish between mild, severe and very severe storms. To ensure the selection of important storms, storms with CAPE values of less than 50 were removed to exclude poor environments for convection occurrence. As a result, out of 4,542 thunderstorms, 535 events were eliminated and 4007 events remained. On this basis, a "2 x 2 contingency table" was prepared that compares thunderstorm events and forecasts. This table provides the information required to compute warning performance statistics including POD (Probability of Detection), FAR (False Alarm Ratio) and CSI (Critical Success Index). But the results of these statistics did not match well with the conditions of thunderstorm events in Iran. Therefore, the discriminant analysis was used to differentiate the intensity of thunderstorms and to discriminate mild, severe and extremely severe thunderstorms.
The results of the study showed that thunderstorms in Iran are increasing during the statistical period with a regression slope of 0.23 events per year (8.5 events in the statistical period). The highest frequency of thunderstorms was observed in the month of May with an annual number of 111, and the lowest was observed in January with 12 events. Most thunderstorms occur around 21:30. The highest average frequency of annual events at stations was related to the stations of Urmia, Tabriz, Khorramabad and Bushehr respectively. The proper capability of ERA data to estimate instability indexes in Iran was proved. ERA data provides a very near estimate for VWS, but estimates for the CAPE index are slightly more than observational values. The highest values of the CAPE index are observed in southern provinces, as well as in the southwest of the Caspian Sea coasts, and the highest values of the VWS index are found on the Persian Gulf coasts. When the storm severity breakdown equation for the 400 selected storm events was obtained and the "2 x 2 contingency table" was prepared, it was found that this equation was not satisfactory with respect to the POD, FAR, and CSI indexes. Hence, using the discriminant analysis, the storm severity breakdown relationships and their discriminant equations were obtained. These equations categorized 60% of the surveyed thunderstorms correctly. There is no significant difference between the mean values of CAPE and VWS in the three storm intensity groups. The role of the VWS index was higher in determining the type of storm.

The study of Thunderstorms in Iran
Popak Dananiyani, Ehsan Soureh, Bakhtiyar Mohammamdi,
Volume 10, Issue 2 (9-2023)
Abstract
Thunderstorms are one of the atmospheric phenomena; when they occur, strong winds are often reported along with heavy rains and lightning. In many cases, their occurrence is accompanied by a lot of financial and human losses. This research was carried out to investigate the Spatio-Temporal of thunderstorms and understand their trends in Iran. For this purpose, the monthly data of the number of days of thunderstorms in 201 Synoptic stations in Iran from the beginning of establishment to 2010 were used. First, the frequency of monthly and annual occurrence of thunderstorms at Synoptic stations in Iran was calculated. Also, the trend of thunderstorms was investigated based on the non-parametric Mann-Kendall test and the amount of decrease or increase of this phenomenon was determined with the help of the Sen’s slope estimator test. The results of this research showed that thunderstorms occur in all areas of Iran. However, the frequency of this phenomenon is more in the North-West, South-West, and South-East of Iran than in other parts. In terms of time, in every month of the year, part(s) of Iran is the center of the maximum occurrence of thunderstorms. For example, in the winter of southwest, south, and southeast of Iran, in the early spring of west and northwest of Iran, and the late spring of the southeast of the country, the main focus of this phenomenon has been. In the summer, northwest to the northeast of Iran and southeast and south of Fars province are the main centers of thunderstorm formation. At the beginning of the autumn season, the coasts of the Caspian Sea to the north of the Persian Gulf and towards the northwest of Iran, and in November and December, the southwest and west of Iran were the main places of occurrence of this weather phenomenon. Other results of this research showed that the trend of thunderstorms was not similar in Iran. This phenomenon showed a significant increasing trend (more than 1 day per year) at the 99% confidence level in the northwest, southwest, and southern half of Kerman province. Also, a significant decrease (0.7 days per year) was estimated in the southeast and a large part of central Iran. In other parts of Iran, a decrease or increase in thunderstorms has been observed in a scattered manner, although the amount was not significant at the 99%, 95%, and 90% confidence levels.

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