A connectionist approach to thunderstorm forecasting

Abstract

Thunderstorms are considered to be global phenomena, as they may occur anywhere in the world, at any instant. Lightning, damaging straight-line wind, large sized hails, heavy precipitation and flooding are some damage-prone factors associated with these storms. Depending on their types (specially the supercell thunderstorm, having the tendency to form tornadoes), some of them may possess great potentiality to produce serious damages to human life and property. Now-a-days, due to rapid technical development, many sophisticated instruments (such as Doppler radar, Satellite, Radiosonde, etc.) are available to record weather data. Efforts are being made to use these data by designing models based on statistical, mathematical, and soft computing techniques, in order to forecast damaging weather conditions with greater reliability.