IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/nathaz/v72y2014i2p1231-1252.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Forcing mechanisms of a heavy precipitation event in the southeastern Adriatic area

Author

Listed:
  • Branka Ivančan-Picek
  • Kristian Horvath
  • Nataša Mahović
  • Marjana Gajić-Čapka

Abstract

The aim of this study was to identify the main mesoscale features and mechanisms responsible for the generation of an extreme precipitation event as a contribution to improving the modelling of processes that produce HPEs. The event occurred during the morning hours on 22 November 2010 over the Dubrovnik coast in Croatia and the hinterland mountain range of the southern Dinaric Alps and caused severe flash floods and landslides and consequent interruption of traffic and electricity supply as well as other infrastructural damage. The analysis is geographically focused on the southern portion of the eastern Adriatic region, which is prone to relatively frequent heavy precipitation events that occur mostly in autumn. This area is one of the rainiest in Europe with expected annual amounts of precipitation greater than 5,000 mm in the mountainous hinterland. The mechanisms responsible for the formation of convection were analysed using synop measurements, satellite data and numerical experiments performed with the WRF model, which was set up at the convection-permitting resolution in the innermost domain. Satellite data were used to identify the precipitation systems and to estimate the intensity of the precipitation during the period of interest. The development of the precipitation system was connected to a strong large-scale ascent over the southern Italy and southern Adriatic due to the advection of warm air and cyclonic vorticity advection, which increases with height. The numerical simulations highlighted the essential role of a southerly low-level jet stream in the transport of warm and moist air towards the affected area. The convergence of two branches of low-level marine air favoured convection triggered over the coast and sea. Furthermore, numerical sensitivity experiments suggested that the orography of the Dinaric Alps plays an essential role in the precipitation maximum over the mountainous hinterland, but also that the orography was not the crucial factor in the heavy precipitation near Dubrovnik. This study highlights the need for a dense network of observations, especially radar measurements, to validate the simulated mechanisms and improve numerical forecasts via data assimilation. Copyright The Author(s) 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Branka Ivančan-Picek & Kristian Horvath & Nataša Mahović & Marjana Gajić-Čapka, 2014. "Forcing mechanisms of a heavy precipitation event in the southeastern Adriatic area," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 72(2), pages 1231-1252, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:72:y:2014:i:2:p:1231-1252
    DOI: 10.1007/s11069-014-1066-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-014-1066-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11069-014-1066-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Irena Nimac & Ksenija Cindrić Kalin & Tanja Renko & Tatjana Vujnović & Kristian Horvath, 2022. "The analysis of summer 2020 urban flood in Zagreb (Croatia) from hydro-meteorological point of view," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 112(1), pages 873-897, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:72:y:2014:i:2:p:1231-1252. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.