METEOROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS

Meteorol. Appl. 15: 475–482 (2008)

Published online 11 August 2008 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/met.90

Tuning of a thunderstorm index for north-eastern Italy

Alberto Dalla Fontana*
ARPAV, Centro Meteo di Teolo, Via Marconi, 55, 35037 Teolo, Italy

ABSTRACT: In the present study the KO index (KOI) is adapted to the climatology of thunderstorms of north-eastern
Italy. A large data set of events falling into the summer months June, July and August of the years 2003–2007 was
collected using imagery from the C-band radar located in Teolo in the north-eastern Italian region Veneto, and soundings
from the Udine station, located 100 km north-east of the radar. Three methods were evaluated in order to identify the best
use of the KOI as a thunderstorm predictor, i.e. based on (1) maximization of the True Skill Score (TSS), (2) frequency
distributions, and (3) a probabilistic approach. The first two methods yield the best use of the KOI for categorical (yes/no)
forecasts. The third method defines a forecast probability for each value of the KOI. The forecast probabilities were
partially corrected for the negative bias found on a reliability diagram. Resolution has been discussed on a Relative
Operating Characteristic (ROC) diagram and compared with the TSS. A more reliable evaluation of the scores could be
achieved using an independent data set, which is presently not available. Recommendations are given for an effective use
of the findings in the forecasting activity. Copyright  2008 Royal Meteorological Society

KEY WORDS stability indices; verification; sounding; radar

Received 4 December 2007; Revised 28 April 2008; Accepted 20 June 2008

1. Introduction to become unstable, typically supplied by a large-scale

Stability indices attempt to evaluate the potential for con-
vective storm activity and, usually, may be readily eval-
uated from operational sounding data. They have a long
history in thunderstorm forecasting: the Showalter Index
and the Lifted Index, used extensively all around the
world, date back more than 50 years (Showalter, 1947;
Galway, 1956). The value of such variables is associ-
ated with their capacity to summarize in a single number
some characteristic of the storm environment. However,
many widely used indices have not been validated as
proper forecast parameters using a rigorous assessment
method (Doswell and Schultz, 2006). Moreover, to be
exploited effectively, a stability index must be adapted
to the local climatology of convection (Andersson et al.,
1989; Collier and Lilley, 1994). In this paper, the occur-
rence of thunderstorms over north-eastern Italy has been
correlated to the KO index (KOI).
The KOI was devised in Germany and has proven
to be effective in forecasting convection over Europe
(Andersson et al., 1989). As there is evidence that most
noticeable convective overturnings in Northern Italy are
connected to the transition of a synoptic system, typically
a cold front (Cacciamani et al., 1995), the choice of the
KOI is suitable since it is an indicator of the potential
instability of the middle-lower layers of the troposphere.
A potentially unstable layer requires an upward motion
* Correspondence to: Alberto Dalla Fontana, ARPAV, Centro Meteo di
Teolo, Via Marconi, 55, 35037 Teolo, Italy.
E-mail: adallafontana@arpa.veneto.it
system (e.g. Kurz and Dalla Fontana, 2004).
Reflectivity images taken from the Teolo radar, sited in
the north-eastern Italian region Veneto, have been used to
monitor convective events. The KOI has been computed
from the soundings of Udine, 100 km north-east of the
radar site.
A data set of 535 events from the period June, July,
August of the years 2003–2007 has been collated. Two
methods have been used to identify the best parameter
to make a categorical (yes/no) forecast: (1) building a
contingency table for a range of KOI values and find-
ing the one that maximizes the True Skill Score (TSS);
(2) finding the value of KOI that best separates the fre-
quency distributions of yes-events and no-events. The
value of the KOI resulting from these two methods can
be considered a warning threshold. In addition, a third
method is proposed which consists of assigning the prob-
ability of occurrence on the basis of the above climatol-
ogy to each value of the index, and thus constructing a
kind of probability forecast for a given KOI. This is a
generalization of a technique adopted at the Netherlands
Meteorological Institute (KNMI) to build a probability
function which correlates the occurrence of hail to the
difference between the maximum height of 45 dBZ radar
echo and the height of the freezing level (Holleman,
2001). In the present study, the height difference has been
replaced by the KOI and the probability of hail by the
probability of a thunderstorm.
In Section 2 of this paper the data are described which
were used for this study, while in Section 3 the details

Copyright  2008 Royal Meteorological Society