European Severe Storms Laboratory
| European Severe Storms Laboratory e. V. (ESSL) |
|
|---|---|
| purpose | non-profit storm research organization |
| Chair: | Pieter Groenemeijer |
| Establishment date: | 2006 |
| Seat : | Weßling near Munich, Wiener Neustadt |
| Website: | www.essl.org |
The European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL) was established in Germany in 2006 under the legal form e. V. founded non-profit storm research organization. In 2012 the "ESSL Research and Training Center" was founded in Austria. The ESSL collects storm data on a European level , checks it and makes it available to scientists and laypeople via a freely accessible web interface. The ESSL also conducts basic research, but also application-oriented projects, and it regularly organizes European severe weather conferences.
The TorDACH network, which only operates in German-speaking countries, was a forerunner organization . The ESSL is internationally networked with other meteorological organizations, such as the NSSL (National Severe Storms Laboratory), which has a similar name in the USA, the European weather satellite operator EUMETSAT , and partners such as Skywarn .
Organization and locations
The ESSL is organized at its two offices in Weßling near Munich (Germany) and Wiener Neustadt (Austria) in the legal form of a recognized non-profit association. The close cooperation between the partner associations is regulated by a "Memorandum of Understanding" from 2012, whereby the board of directors of both legal entities is largely made up of one person. English is the language used in official communication.
Institutional members with voting rights in the Annual General Meeting are national weather services ( e.g. DWD and ZAMG ) and meteorological research institutions (such as the Research Center for Environmental Changes at Academia Sinica in Taiwan or the DLR ( German Aerospace Center ) in Germany). In addition, weather researchers from different parts of the world are personal members.
The control of the activities and financial management as well as the scientific advice is carried out by the ESSL Advisory Board, which is made up of three well-known personalities from the interest groups "National Weather Services" and "Research Institutions".
At the Weßling site in Bavaria there has been an ESSL office on the DLR site in Oberpfaffenhofen since 2006, as the ESSL is historically a spin-off of the DLR.
The ESSL has been operating its research and training center at the Wiener Neustadt location in Lower Austria since 2012. The location was chosen due to the geographical location, which is favorable for research not only in Central, but also in Southern and Eastern Europe, due to the central accessibility in Europe by public transport, but also due to the atypical weather situations occurring at this location, like the tornado in 1916 .
European severe weather database ESWD
In severe weather database European Severe Weather Database (ESWD) are relating to tornadoes , large hail , heavy rain, gustnado ( gustnadoes ), funnel cloud ( funnel clouds ), Dust Devil , heavy snow, ice hazards, avalanches , schadensbringendem lightning and heavy gusts of wind in the countries of Europe and of the Mediterranean area. Anyone can enter severe weather reports into the ESWD via a web interface. Small database extracts are freely accessible. There is a gradual quality control of each individual storm report. The ESWD is the most extensive and most important storm database in Europe.
European Severe Weather Conference ECSS
As a statutory task, the ESSL organizes or co-organizes the European severe weather conference ECSS every two years, which has been held in a different European city since 2002 (with the previous EUROTORNADO conference in Toulouse in 2000).
The ESSL awards two prizes as part of the ECSS: First, the Heino-Tooming-Award for outstanding scientific work in the field of severe weather research, which was carried out in European cooperation. The award is named after the Estonian meteorologist Heino Tooming, who died in 2004. And secondly, the Nikolai Dotzek Award for outstanding individual scientific achievements or for an entire life's work.
ESSL testbed
Since 2012, the ESSL has organized the ESSL Testbed every year in early summer in its research and training center in Wiener Neustadt . This is a test and training activity lasting several weeks that combines product evaluation of meteorological storm warning tools with advanced training for forecast meteorologists. Meteorologists from all over Europe, together with model and product developers, create test forecasts for storm-prone regions in Europe in real time and try to improve them.
Personnel
On May 29, 2010, Nikolai Dotzek (born 1966), initiator, founding member and first director of the ESSL, died suddenly and unexpectedly. Dotzek was counted among the most influential storm researchers of his time worldwide and laid the foundation for today's ESSL through the TorDACH network he initiated .
The following management positions are currently appointed: Pieter Groenemeijer (Director, Netherlands), Kathrin Riemann-Campe (Vice Director, Germany) and Alois M. Holzer (Treasurer and Operational Director, Austria).
Sources and literature
- In Memoriam Dotzek: [1]
- ESSL statutes: German and English language version
- European Severe Weather Conference ECSS 2009: Conference Preprints
- Dotzek, N., P. Groenemeijer, B. Feuerstein, and AM Holzer, 2009: Overview of ESSL's severe convective storms research using the European Severe Weather Database ESWD. Atmos. Res. 93, 575-586.
- Press release of the NSSL in the USA after the establishment of the ESSL: [2]
- New ESSL board from 2011: [3]
Web links
- European Severe Storms Laboratory
- European Severe Weather Database
- European Conference on Severe Storms
Individual evidence
- ↑ ESSL organization chart, accessed on May 3, 2014
- ↑ Institutional Members, accessed May 3, 2014
- ↑ Annual report 2012 with list of members
- ↑ ESSL Advisory Board
- ↑ In Wiener Neustadt, storms are researched on ORF , accessed on February 2, 2012
- ↑ ESWD definitions
- ^ NSSL News, accessed March 14, 2013
- ↑ ECSS conference series
- ↑ Prizes awarded by the ESSL
- ↑ ESSL Testbed Wiener Neustadt
- ↑ ESSL Board of Directors