Print Email Facebook Twitter Early warnings of hazardous thunderstorms over Lake Victoria Title Early warnings of hazardous thunderstorms over Lake Victoria Author Thiery, Wim (ETH Zürich; Vrije Universiteit Brussel) Gudmundsson, Lukas (ETH Zürich) Bedka, Kristopher (NASA Langley Research Center) Semazzi, Fredrick H.M. (University of North Carolina) Lhermitte, S.L.M. (TU Delft Mathematical Geodesy and Positioning) Willems, Patrick (Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) van Lipzig, Nicole P. M. (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) Seneviratne, Sonia I. (ETH Zürich) Date 2017-07-06 Abstract Weather extremes have harmful impacts on communities around Lake Victoria in East Africa. Every year, intense nighttime thunderstorms cause numerous boating accidents on the lake, resulting in thousands of deaths among fishermen. Operational storm warning systems are therefore crucial. Here we complement ongoing early warning efforts based on numerical weather prediction, by presenting a new satellite data-driven storm prediction system, the prototype Lake Victoria Intense storm Early Warning System (VIEWS). VIEWS derives predictability from the correlation between afternoon land storm activity and nighttime storm intensity on Lake Victoria, and relies on logistic regression techniques to forecast extreme thunderstorms from satellite observations. Evaluation of the statistical model reveals that predictive power is high and independent of the type of input dataset. We then optimise the configuration and show that false alarms also contain valuable information. Our results suggest that regression-based models that are motivated through process understanding have the potential to reduce the vulnerability of local fishing communities around Lake Victoria. The experimental prediction system is publicly available under the MIT licence at http://github.com/wthiery/VIEWS. Subject early warning systemsextreme weatherLake Victoriavulnerability To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:439cb4fe-4559-47f2-a900-bfb74ad4fcf5 DOI https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7521 ISSN 1748-9318 Source Environmental Research Letters, 12 (7) Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2017 Wim Thiery, Lukas Gudmundsson, Kristopher Bedka, Fredrick H.M. Semazzi, S.L.M. Lhermitte, Patrick Willems, Nicole P. M. van Lipzig, Sonia I. Seneviratne Files PDF pdf.pdf 1.22 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:439cb4fe-4559-47f2-a900-bfb74ad4fcf5/datastream/OBJ/view