USING SATELLITE OBSERVATION FOR EARLY WARNING OF CONVECTIVE STORM IN TEHRAN

Abstract. Severe convective storms are responsible for large amount of damage each year around the world. They form an important part of the climate system by redistributing heat, moisture, and trace gases, as well as producing large quantities of precipitation. As these extreme and rare events are in mesoscale there is many uncertainty in predicting them and we can’t rely on just models. On the other hand, remote sensing has a large application in Meteorology and near real time weather forecasting, especially in rare and extreme events like convective storms that might be difficult to predict with atmospheric models. On second of June 2014, near 12UTC a sudden and strong convective storm occurred in Tehran province that was not predicted, and caused economic and human losses. In This research we used satellite observations along with synoptic station measurements to predict and monitor this storm. Results from MODIS data show an increase in the amount of cloudiness and also aerosol optical depth and sudden decrease in cloud top temperature few hours before the storm occurs. EUMETSAT images show the governing of convection before the storm occurs. With combining the observation data that shows Lake of humidity and high temperature in low levels with satellite data that reveals instability in high levels that together caused this convective, we could track the storm and decrease the large amount of damage.