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Abstract:
An operational hail suppression program has been based in Romania, since 2005. The program is designed to reduce hail damage caused by hail in the most vulnerable agricultural areas (protected areas) of the country. An exploratory analysis of volume-scan, S-band, and C-band radars data using storm cell tracking software was used to calculate seven radar-derived parameters associated with hail from 50 seeded storms, during the summers of 2017- 2022. All selected hailstorms had a lifetime of more than one hour, divided into three stages: before seeding, during seeding, and after seeding. The statistical t-test was used to test the null hypothesis of no seeding effect. The data support the claim that seeding causes a decrease in most of the analyzed parameters. The seeding effect is estimated to decrease the mean values of Height of the 45dBZ echo above the environmental melting level (-30%), maximum storm top height (-20%), vertically integrated liquid (-20%), and other parameters. Furthermore, the spatial analysis of hail kinetic energy shows that areas with values over 300 J/kg are lower in the protected areas compared to the neighboring ones where the clouds have not seeded.
