Storm Hans (or Zacharias/Petar) with ~979 hPa is already the next major cyclonic summer storm after Poly (4-7 July 2023 with up to 148 km/h; 92 mph) bringing devastating floods to Sweden & Norway. In several ways, Hans is "the perfect storm" & globalwarming contributed.

Frederik Schenks post på X/twitter , augusti 9 2023.

But why are Geologists interested in storms?

While storm Hans is clearly more intense in terms of rain and flooding due to global warming, we still don't know so much about long-term changes regarding the frequency and intensity of winter or summer storms or whether storm tracks changed their path in the past in response to changes in climate forcing. In a storminess research project let by Malin Kylander, several researchers at IGV study past storminess in various sedimental systems in the Euro-Atlantic region for the last up to 10.000 years. These reconstructions are crucial to understand if and how storms change due to warming or cooling and evaluate whether our climate models capture such changes. "As an atmospheric scientist, it is fascinating to observe first changes in real storms while in the same time learning more and more about them in the past," says Frederik Schenk.

Links

Video clip from Aktuellt on SVT2, where researcher Frederik Schenk talks about storm "Hans".

See the clip here

More about storms

Project: Storminess in the Eastern North Atlantic Region

Severe winter windstorms have become an increasingly common occurrence in the eastern North Atlantic over the last few decades. This increase in storminess is thought to be a result of global warming and is therefore expected to intensify in the future. There is however, low confidence in available projections and we are not able to accurately predict future storminess. This is significant considering that European storms have caused 85,000 deaths and an estimated €350 billion in damage over the last three decades.

Read about Storminess in the Eastern North Atlantic Region