Atmospheric hazards may yield major losses both in terms of casualties and of money. This sensitivity of society will probably even increase because of the magnification effect due to the entanglement between local and global scales. While climate projections foresees that the Earth's climate in the coming decades will be characterized by increased average temperatures and a reorganization of precipitation patterns, the effects of global climate changes on atmospheric hazards, often characterized by small spatial and temporal scales, are at best uncertain and at worst obscures. Therefore, dealing with this uncertainty and unknowns does require a tightened interface between researchers, service providers and stakeholders to address and cope with this complex and multi-faceted issue.

This session will address the science behind the various phenomena and topics (listed below) connected with atmospheric hazards, but also aspects connected with the interface between research, development and stakeholders. In addition, following the "fil rouge" of the 2012 EMS/ECAC conference, this session will also encourage contributions addressing climatic aspects of these phenomena, processes and impacts. Potential topics (but not exclusively) are:

• Cold/heat episodes as well as dry spells;
• Fog;
• Flash-floods and heavy rain events;
• Storm-surges and atmospheric driven marine hazards;
• Hail;
• Freezing rain, icing and intense snow falls;
• Tornadoes, waterspouts, derechos and downbursts;
• Severe wind storms;
• Intense Mediterranean cyclones;
• Tropical like cyclones;
• Lightning;
• Local effects of polar lows;
• Severe katabatic or foehn winds
• Gap and orographic flows;
• Breaking of gravity waves;

Contributions dealing with remote sensing aspects will be extremely welcome because of their intrinsic capability to be extended to other areas and because, thanks to the wide coverage of remote sensing, can be better tailored to stake-holders interests. In addition, we particularly welcome papers dealing with database and data collection tools.

Contributions dealing with studies of specific episodes (case studies) are welcome provided they are relevant and archetypical for the area, which was affected by those events. In general, all the contributors are encouraged to find in their work a general aspect that might be of interest even outside of the area where the research was carried out.

The above-listed topics are naturally not exclusive and this Session’s Conveners wait to be surprised by new ideas and approaches related to high resolution synoptic climatology and impacts springing out of human inventiveness.