the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 10 Apr 2026
Severe convective weather in Italy: Current understanding and Research Priorities in the TIM campaign
Abstract. The status and priorities of research on severe convective storms in Italy are outlined here, with particular attention to the upcoming Thunderstorm Intensification from Mountains to Plains (TIM) observation campaign. The increased intensity of events induced by climate change is attracting growing attention from the Italian scientific community on this topic. While northern Italy is the most studied, with numerous papers analyzing intense events such as tornadoes, hailstorms, and flash floods, the central and southern regions are less explored, even though they are also occasionally subject to intense events modulated by mesoscale circulations, sea-land interactions, and complex orography. The TIM campaign represents a unique opportunity to improve the understanding, monitoring, and forecasting of severe storms. The campaign, led by the European Severe Storm Laboratory, represents a first-of-this-kind pan-European campaign aimed at obtaining coordinated data on severe convective storms, and is a key step toward improving warnings, forecasts, climate change impact estimation, and adaptation measures. The value of the campaign for Italy is indicated by the participation of several institutions, both from the academic and the operational community. Among the planned initiatives, the use of two Italian airborne platforms will allow for a more complete characterization of the environments associated with convective storms, including an improvement in our understanding of the role of aerosols and storm-scale modeling.
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Status: open (until 28 May 2026)
- RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1478', Anonymous Referee #1, 15 Apr 2026 reply
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1478', Anonymous Referee #2, 17 Apr 2026
reply
This article provides an excellent overview about currently pressing research topics on severe convective storms with a focus on Italy as the European hotspot for these events. The authors advocate for field measurements to tackle this research.
The structure of the manuscript is good to follow, the Figures are appropriate, and the writing is of high quality. Scientifically, I agree with most of the article. I only have a few optional minor comments that could improve certain aspects in my opinion.specific comments:
L. 47: “While northern Italy is most studies,…” - to the unfamiliar reader this may sound like there are no open questions for N Italy. Consider adding something like "...flash flood, there are many open questions. The southern regions are even less explored..."
L. 151: Perhaps verify, my status was that 2028-2030 is more likely.
L. 163: consider including a map or adding the relevant regions to Fig. 2. I think this would help the readers who are not familiar with Italy.
Section 2.5: I agree with the importance of Aerosols. You could add a bit more perspective specifically for convective storms. For example, are Aerosols, like moisture, distributed heterogeneously in severe storm situations like in the triple point scenario you mention above (deMartin et al 2024)?
Section 2.5: the interplay of hail to the previous sections could be mentioned and perhaps discussed here. For example the role of aerosols (e.g., Brennan and Wilhelm 2025) or of mediterranean moisture and local boundaries (de Martin 2025).
Line 358: “advancing the physics of the model” - this is quite general and no details are given. Do you mean improving microphysics schemes (again a link to aerosols), model resolution, fluxes over orography (TeamX), etc.? Are there any plans on these topics for TIM over Italy?
What models are currently used and will be tried to improve?L. 587: I agree that resolving aerosol concentrations in 3D is crucial. This point could be supported more by the fact that convective storms source their inflow differently, depending on their mode (supercell, MCS, etc.) and if they are elevated or surface-based. For Supercells, different flanks of the storm even have different inflow origins, which has implications for hail growth (e.g., Lin et al. 2022). Of course near orography, inflows might be even more complex and changing over time. Thus, 3D monitoring of aerosols, moisture, and winds would be a unique and impactful observation set.
Lin, Y., & Kumjian, M. R. (2022). Influences of CAPE on Hail Production in Simulated Supercell Storms. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 79(1), 179–204. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAS-D-21-0054.1
Typos:
L. 105: “unique“ instead of “peculiar“?
L. 272: “have“ instead of “has“ ?
L. 290: extra space
L. 510: "…to investigate severe convective weather features at unprecedented resolution." ?
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-1478-RC2
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It was a pleasure reviewing this paper. The quality of the paper is high. Not only the scientific content is sound, also the structure, clarity and language are very well readable.
The paper covers important aspects of lack of data and scientific understanding that should be tackled by a large European field campaign on severe thunderstorms, while the Italian foci are highlighted specifically. Those Italian foci are well in line with the general idea of the field campaign, as evident from the cited main TIM whitepaper by Fischer et al., and the present paper provides important further details.
The introduction nicely covers the context. The State of the Art chapter allows for a good overview on current knowledge and warning practice. The sections on Atmospheric Rivers and Aerosols provide important further motivation for the field campaign. A technical note: One fresh paper that only appeared this year (formally not in 2025, as stated in the References section) could be added to the hail section, as it specifically discusses hail trends for northern Italy: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01868-0
Another technical remark: At some instances (Fig. 3, for example) the F-Scale is used for the rating of tornado intensities, at other instances the EF-Scale is used. As the EF-Scale is defined mostly for building codes and building practices in the USA (and specifically defined by the purpose of US buildings instead of generic stability properties), it usually cannot be applied to European buildings. In other words, it is not defined for many European Damage Indicators (DIs). For this reason, it would be correct to consistantly refer to the F-Scale throughout the paper (for historical ratings, or to the IF-Scale for recent or freshly rerated events).
The Open Issues section is well written too. The paragraph starting with line 411 is a very important one. Same for chapter 3.3. The paragraph starting with line 496 provides an important motivation, chapter 3.8 too. Chapter 4.2 mentions the relationship to civil protection aspects and highlights the importance of analyzing the ground impact of severe convective storms. In the Conclusions section, the paragraph starting with line 616 is again a quite important one.
To summarize, this paper seems to be a good scientific basis integrating inter-connected disciplins in a well-designed multi-disciplinary approach for the described and planned field campaign activities in Italy. I congratulate the authors.