DOES SATELLITE DATA HAVE A POTENTIAL FOR FORECASTING AND MONITORING OF EXTREME CONVECTIVE EVENTS AS E.G. TORNADOES OVER EUROPE?

Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are small-scale phenomena of extreme weather well known occurring regularly over Northern America, but they occur also over Europe with disastrous impact often resulting in losses of life and property. Therefore, forecasting and monitoring of such severe hazards is an absolutely necessary but challenging task. NWP forecasts are essential for early warning of probability of occurrence, region and time period of such catastrophic weather events, but for specifying the precise area and time of such extreme events as far as possible, continuous data from real-time and full area-covering observing systems are required as input for relevant monitoring and forecasting tools. In this paper the question is discussed and confirmed whether MSG-type satellite data do have a role for forecasting and monitoring of extreme convection or even of tornadoes over the area of Central Europe. Two nowcasting lines using MSG products as part of the weather prediction system of the DWD are shown: one line for monitoring severe convection which is providing the users with images and animations, a second automatic line running in the background for the assessment of the probability of severe convection. In this paper the potential of specific MSG products for diagnosing and nowcasting severe convection in selected cases is demonstrated. For a situation with a tornado event over the small town Micheln (central Germany) in Summer 2004 it is shown that data and products from METEOSAT 8 provide unique information supporting the assessment of weather situations as regards their risks for tornadoes. A prototype of an automatic severe convection probability index image derived from MSG data will be described