Temporal Trend and Spatial Distribution of Avalanche Activity during the Last 50 Years in Switzerland

Martin Laternser () and Martin Schneebeli

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2002, vol. 27, issue 3, 230 pages

Abstract: Avalanche observations are an important factor foroperational avalanche warningand the main parameter to carry out an objectiveverification of the avalanche bulletinin retrospect. For the first time, a 50-year longseries of avalanche activity data of 84Swiss avalanche observation stations is analysed anddiscussed. After careful datapreparation a regional avalanche activity index (RAAI)for seven snow-climatologicalregions of Switzerland was developed. Using differentstatistical descriptors, we wereunable to detect a long-term change in avalancheactivity, which stands in contrast toa significant increase of winter precipitation.The comparison of the RAAI with acomprehensive database for destructive avalanches(DADB) resulted in a low correlation.This shows clearly the difficulties involved indetermining a good measure for specifyingthe true avalanche activity. Depending on thedegree of the avalanche activity DADB andavalanche observations represent the avalancheactivity differently and overlap. Suggestionsare given for the improvement of the ongoingavalanche observation programme in order toachieve an overall consistent and reliabledata set in future. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2002

Keywords: avalanche; avalanche activity; avalanche observation; climate change; data quality; destructive avalanche; Switzerland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1020327312719 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:27:y:2002:i:3:p:201-230

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1023/A:1020327312719

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().