Compound Temperature and Precipitation Events in the Czech Republic: Differences of Stratiform versus Convective Precipitation in Station and Reanalysis Data

Abstract

Some natural hazards may result from the coincidences of anomalies of different climatic variables. These so-called compound events can cause extreme impacts. This study analyzes compounds of extreme temperature with notable convective and stratiform precipitation in the Czech Republic during 1982–2016. Characteristics of compound events obtained from 11 stations’ data are compared with those from the gridded ERA-Interim reanalysis. We found that notable stratiform precipitation frequently coincides with warm nights and warm days in winter but with cold days in the other seasons. While the winter stratiform precipitation coinciding with warm days and warm nights is linked to anticyclonic, southwest, northwest, and anticyclonic-northwest circulation types, the northeast type is the most crucial circulation type linked to notable stratiform precipitation coinciding with cold days in all seasons except winter. The compound events of notable convective precipitation occur most frequently in summer and they are joined mainly with warm days. These compound events are associated with anticyclonic, cyclonic, and northwest circulation types. Although the number of days with stratiform compound events is larger in ERA-Interim than in the station data, the results are qualitatively comparable. ERA-Interim is, however, not able to reproduce convective compound events obtained from the station data.