The benefits of emergency rescue and reanalysis data in decadal storm damage assessment studies
Studying changes in storm-induced forest damage in Finland has not been possible previously due to the lack of continuous, long series of impact data. We overcome this by combining emergency rescue data from the Finnish rescue services "PRONTO" (2011-) with ERA-Interim reanalysis data of w...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2015-06-01
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| Series: | Advances in Science and Research |
| Online Access: | http://www.adv-sci-res.net/12/97/2015/asr-12-97-2015.pdf |
| Summary: | Studying changes in storm-induced forest damage in Finland has not been
possible previously due to the lack of continuous, long series of impact
data. We overcome this by combining emergency rescue data from the Finnish
rescue services "PRONTO" (2011-) with ERA-Interim reanalysis data of wind
gusts and soil temperatures to define exceedance thresholds for potential
forest damage days. These thresholds were applied as a proxy for the period
1979–2013 in order to study the spatial and decadal characteristics of
forest damage in Finland due to windstorms.
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The results indicated that the area most impacted by potential forest damage
was the south-western part of Finland along the coast, with 1–10 damaging
storm cases per year. A decadal examination highlighted a lull period in the
number of potential forest damage days during the 1990s compared to the
1980s and 2000s, albeit no trend was evident.
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The inclusion of emergency rescue data allowed us for the first time to
estimate the spatial distribution and decadal variations of potential forest
damage days due to windstorms in Finland. The results achieved will
encourage further development of thresholds for potential forest damage by
including additional data sources and applying them to future climate scenarios. |
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| ISSN: | 1992-0628 1992-0636 |