Review article: Observations for high-impact weather and their use in verification

This paper reviews new observations which can be considered for the verification of high-impact weather and provides advice for their usage in objective verification. Two high-impact weather phenomena are considered: thunderstorm and fog.

First, a framework for the verification of high-impact weather is proposed, including the definition of forecast and observations in this context and creation of a verification set. Then, new observations showing a potential for the detection and quantification of high-impact weather are reviewed, including remote sensing datasets, products developed for nowcasting, datasets derived from telecommunication systems, data collected from citizens, reports of impacts and claim/damage reports from insurance companies.