Weather is everywhere. The weather has an impact on the earth surface, but also on everything that is on that surface: vegetation, soil, water availability, humans, etc. Many natural hazards have extreme weather conditions as a trigger, like droughts, floods, heat-waves, and rainfall-induced landslides. Also, agricultural production is dependent on weather conditions, as extreme weather events might cause damage to crops or land, and lead to less harvest. Similarly, the extent and magnitude of the urban heat island effects are largest under hot, stable weather conditions. When analyzing and visualising this weather information with data on the earth systems under study, one gets insight into the impact of weather and can act accordingly to prevent or mitigate disasters.
Fortunately, the weather is continuously monitored worldwide, by satellites and ground stations at minute, daily or monthly scales. Many meteorological datasets are freely accessible, being an enormously rich source for weather information.
This course provides knowledge on weather data sources and tools to analyze the interaction between the weather and earth surface processes in time and space. The focus will be on analysing meteorological datasets to extract information on extreme weather events. The challenge will be to link this climatic information to non-meteorological data to learn more on the impact weather has on earth systems, such as natural hazards, hydrology, vegetation, urban environments, etc.