Hail is one of the most damaging weather hazards worldwide, with far-reaching impacts on infrastructure, agriculture, ecosystems, and society. Despite recent advances, significant challenges remain in understanding, observing, predicting, and projecting hail across weather and climate timescales.
This session welcomes contributions on all aspects of hail research, from fundamental process understanding to societal applications. Topics include, but are not limited to, observational studies using both historic and/or novel datasets, storm-scale and microphysical processes, extreme and compound events, numerical and statistical modelling, forecasting and nowcasting, machine learning and AI, climate variability and change, as well as risk assessment and insurance-related applications. Within these areas, studies may lean towards either process- or impact-oriented perspectives.
We also encourage contributions where hail is an important aspect of the broader research scope. This can be severe convective storm research, such as studies of supercells or mesoscale convective systems, but also natural hazard risk frameworks that include hail. Studies linking atmospheric science with hazard and risk assessment, impact modelling, insurance applications, impact-based forecasting and warning, resilience, and adaptation are especially encouraged.
This session aims to foster interdisciplinary exchange and strengthen links between atmospheric science, climate research, natural hazards, and the insurance and risk communities to advance our understanding of hailstorms across weather, climate, and society. We thus look forward to receiving interdisciplinary contributions connecting academia, operational weather services, industry, government, and decision makers.