Natural Hazards and Earth

Abstract. A statistical approach in order to study fog event characteristics occuring at the airport of Thessaloniki, North-ern Greece is presented in this work. To achieve this, the sea-sonal and diurnal characteristics of fog are investigated using 35 years (1971–2005) of observations of meteorological pa-rameters such as: visibility, air temperature, dew point tem-perature, air relative humidity, wind vector, precipitation, and cloud base height and coverage. Hourly surface observations of fifteen (15) years (1991–2005) are used to identify fog events induced by various physical mechanisms. Fog events are classified into fog types through the application of ob-jective criteria that are derived upon fog formation processes and under the influence of various physiographic features. The temporal variability of different fog type occurrences are examined and the events are characterized according to thei