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ABSTRACT
A synthesis of tornado observations across Europe between 1800 and 2014 is used to produce a pan-European climatology. Based on regional tornado-occurrence datasets and articles published in peer-reviewed journals, the evolution and the major contributions to tornado databases for 30 European countries were analyzed. Between 1800 and 2014, 9563 tornadoes were reported in Europe with an increase from 8 tornadoes per year between 1800 and 1850 to 242 tornadoes per year between 2000 and 2014. The majority of the reports came from northern, western, and southern Europe, and to a lesser extent from eastern Europe where tornado databases were developed after the 1990s. Tornadoes occur throughout the year with a maximum in June-August for most of Europe and in August-November for southern Europe. Tornadoes occur more frequently between 1300 and 1500 UTC over most of Europe and between 0900 and 1100 UTC over southern Europe. Where intensity was known, 74.7%of tornadoes were classified as F0 and F1, 24.5% as F2 and F3, and 0.8% as F4 and F5. Comparing this intensity distribution over Europe with the intensity distribution for tornadoes in the United States shows that tornadoes over western and eastern Europe are more likely to be supercellular tornadoes and those over northern and southern Europe are likely to also include nonsupercellular tornadoes.
1. Introduction
Our current knowledge of the climatology of tornadoes in Europe has been built from historical collections of tornado reports (e.g., Peltier 1840; Wegener 1917), case studies (e.g., Hepites 1887; Lemon et al. 2003), and local climatologies (e.g., Snitkovskii 1987; Dessens and Snow 1989). Unfortunately, these datasets were limited by inconsistencies in observational networks and reporting practices across Europe and have only allowed a simplified and inaccurate understanding of the pan-European tornado climatology. Recently, this situation began to change with more tornadoes reported in the last decade compared to previous decades and with reports now coming from the majority of European countries. This recent increase in the number of reports can be attributed to increased public awareness (e.g., Rauhala et al. 2012; Antonescu and Bell 2015), to the development of databases maintained by national meteorological services (e.g., Renko et al. 2013), and to efforts at collecting reports on a European level (e.g., Dotzek et al. 2009). Thus, we are...