Climatology of potentially severe convective environments from reanalysis

This study establishes a U.S. climatology of potentially severe convective environments for the period 1979-2009 using reanalysis data. Examinations of significant severe weather environmental variability are presented for five active severe weather regions in the U.S. Regional comparisons illustrate significant severe environments have changed little over the period of record. Significant severe weather environments are then verified by significant severe weather reports to ensure that the climatologies presented herein are indeed representative of observations. Reports indicate that environments calculated by reanalysis tend to overestimate the actual distribution of reports, likely due to the methodological absence of accounting for a lifting mechanism. On average, reanalysis calculated significant severe weather environments closely mimic the annual cycle of significant severe weather reports.