scClim: An interdisciplinary project for assessing hail risk and impacts across Europe in a changing climate

Hail is the costliest weather-related hazard in Switzerland and a major driver of convective storm losses across Europe, yet large uncertainties remain about how hail and its impacts will evolve in a warming climate. Stakeholders, decision-makers, and public authorities require actionable information on hail risk to strengthen risk management and climate adaptation. This need motivated the Swiss research initiative scClim, which integrates expertise from multiple disciplines to advance the understanding of hail risk and its impacts in a changing climate across Europe. Over four years, scClim brought together research institutions, insurers, and public agencies to develop an integrated framework combining a unique hail observation network, open-source impact modelling, convection-permitting climate simulations, and a real-time interactive demonstrator platform developed with stakeholders. The platform provides hindcasts, forecasts, and impact estimates for vehicles, buildings, and crops using the CLIMADA risk-modelling framework. The climate simulations, generating 11-year hail climatologies for both present-day conditions and a +3 °C warming scenario, indicate increasing hail frequencies in northeastern Europe and decreasing frequencies in southwestern Europe. Hailstorm track analyses further reveal larger maximum hail sizes, more extensive hail swaths, and intensified precipitation and wind for storms producing large hail. As a result, future damage potential to buildings increases, while agricultural impacts show a more complex response: earlier growing seasons reduce crop exposure, but regional increases in hail frequency amplify overall risk.

 

The resulting open-source datasets, impact functions, and interactive platform provide a practical foundation for impact-based warnings and long-term risk assessments in a changing climate. Together, these elements advanced both the physical science of hail and the translation of that science into decision-relevant tools. While scClim focuses on hail in Switzerland and Europe, its seamless, open-source, hazard-to-impact modelling chain is transferable to other convective hazards, such as wind, flash floods, and compound events, and to other regions. In this sense, scClim serves as a prototype for interdisciplinary, user-oriented climate-risk research and offers a practical pathway to strengthen preparedness and climate adaptation.