Weather system naming in Europe

Weather system naming in Europe is the responsibility of the national meteorological services belonging to the geographical area in which a weather system originates. These services collaborate to give the system a name, which is then used throughout Europe. This framework was set up beginning in 2013 by EUMETNET, a network of 33 European national meteorological services.

On the North Atlantic coast, the United Kingdom's Met Office, Ireland's Met Éireann and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) collaborate on names.^[1] Other groups include the southwestern countries of Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Spain and Portugal, and the northern group of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Several countries in central and eastern Europe use a naming scheme from the Free University of Berlin. Tropical storms crossing the Atlantic keep the name assigned by the United States National Hurricane Center.

The practice of using names to identify weather systems goes back several centuries. Systems were often named after places, people or things they hit before the start of formal naming schemes.^[2][3]

Credit for the first usage of personal names for weather is generally given to the Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, who named tropical cyclones and anticyclones between 1887–1907.^[4] Wragge used names drawn from the letters of the Greek alphabet, Greek and Roman mythology and female names, to describe weather systems over Australia, New Zealand and the Antarctic.^[3][4] After the new Australian government had failed to create a federal weather bureau and appoint him director, Wragge started naming cyclones after political figures.^[5]

This system of naming weather systems subsequently fell into disuse for several years after Wragge retired, until it was revived in the latter part of the Second World War.^[4] Despite falling into disuse the naming scheme was occasionally mentioned in the press, with an editorial published in the Launceston Examiner newspaper on 5 October 1935 that called for the return of the naming scheme.^[2][6]

There is no universal definition of what constitutes a windstorm in Europe, nor is there a universally accepted system of naming storms. For example, in Greece, naming criteria were established for storms when the storm's forecasted winds are above 50 km/h over land, with the wind expected to have a significant impact to infrastructures.^[7] In Denmark, a windstorm must have an hourly average windspeed of at least 90 km/h (25 m/s).^[8]

Naming conventions used in Europe are generally based on conditions that are forecast, not conditions that have actually occurred, as public awareness and preparedness are often cited as the main purpose of the naming schemes–for example, a reference.^[9] Therefore, an assignment of a storm name does not mean that a storm will actually develop.

During 2013, in response to the increasing usage by the European media of common names for any meteorological depression that caused disruptive weather, a task force of the Working Group for the Cooperation between European Forecasters (WGCEF) of the European Meteorological Network (EUMETNET) established a pan-European naming scheme.^[10]

The main objective of this project was to develop a project that would be operated by all of the European national meteorological services and used by the media as well as other agencies such as civil protection.^[10] For the purposes of the project, Europe was divided into six groups of neighbouring countries with similar weather and climate characteristics.^[11]

Should a system move from one area to another, it will retain the name it was assigned by the original weather service.

This group includes the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands.

In the western group, a storm is named if one of the meteorological agencies in those countries issues an orange warning (amber in the UK), which generally requires a likelihood of widespread sustained wind speeds greater than 65 km/h, or widespread wind gust speeds over 110 km/h. (Required wind speeds vary slightly by agency and by season.) Both the likelihood of impact and the potential severity of the system are considered when naming a storm.^[12][9][13]

During September 2015, the United Kingdom's Met Office and Ireland's Met Éireann announced a 2-year pilot project, to name weather systems that were expected to impact either the UK or Ireland.^[14][15] The idea for the UK storm naming system was brought forward by Dee Cotgrove of the Met Office, whose attendance at American Meteorological Society meetings which showcased the hurricane naming system indicated that there may be benefits in establishing an official system for naming UK storms.^{[16] [17]} In order to decide which names were going to be used, members of the public were invited to submit names to the forecasters via social media, which was welcomed with enthusiasm as thousands of names were suggested before they were reviewed by both centres.^[18][19]

The first list of names was compiled and issued during October 2015, with any names appearing on the List of retired Atlantic hurricane names or starting with the letters Q, U, X, Y, Z omitted.^[18][19] It was also decided that any post-tropical cyclones that impacted Europe would retain its name and be referred to as "ex-hurricane". Over the next few months, a total of eleven storms were assigned a name whenever a yellow, amber or red warning for wind was issued by either agency.^[18] The project also helped Met Éireann communicate the impacts of several systems, which impacted Ireland in quick succession over the 2015-16 Christmas and New Year period.^[18]

After the season, it was determined that the project was a success, as the names had been adopted and accepted by the public, the media and emergency responders.^[18] As a result, it was decided to expand the naming scheme to include other weather types such as rain and snow, if its impact could lead to significant flooding as advised by their partner agencies.^[18] In 2016 the UK Met Office and Met Éireann won the Silver AMEC (International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication) award for impact in changing behaviours.^[20]

Ahead of the 2019-20 winter, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) decided to join the scheme and name weather systems, in order to raise awareness of dangerous weather before it impacted the country.^[21][22] They decided to name a system if it was forecast to produce significant wind gusts over the country and result in the issuance of an orange or red weather warning.^[21]

This group includes Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium and Luxembourg.

During 2017, encouraged by the success of the UKMO and Met Éireann naming scheme, the meteorological services of France, Portugal and Spain, decided to set up their own naming scheme.^[23] The naming scheme was discussed throughout the year by email, before it was finalised in various web-conferences during the Autumn.^[23] It was decided that a system within the Atlantic Ocean or western Mediterranean Sea would be named if it was expected to cause an orange or red wind warning in either France, Spain or Portugal.

This group includes Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

During September 2013, the Danish media used 3 different names that had originated in Britain, Germany and Sweden to describe the St. Jude storm.^[24] This created confusion within Denmark as the public thought that three separate depressions were impacting the country rather than a single system.^[24] During the aftermath of the system, the then minister responsible for the Danish Meteorological Institute Martin Lidegaard, named the system Allan and ordered the DMI to name storms affecting Denmark in the future.^[24] During the course of that winter, it became clear that not having a single naming system for significant weather in Europe, was causing confusion as the media used names from different schemes to describe the same storms.^[18]

This group includes Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Malta.

This group started naming windstorms for the 2021-22 European windstorm season, including Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones.

This group includes Greece, Cyprus and Israel.^[25]

In January 2017, the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) started to name weather systems, that would be expected to cause significant social and economic consequences in Greece.^[26] In order to do this, the NOA developed a number of criteria that took into account, what the meteorological hazard was as well as the size of the affected area and population at risk.

This group includes Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Czechia, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia. It uses the naming scheme of the meteorology department of the Free University of Berlin (FUB).

The FUB names all high and low pressure systems that affect Europe, though they do not assign names to any actual storms.^[27] A windstorm that is associated with one of these pressure systems will at times be recognized by the name assigned to the associated pressure system by the FUB. Named windstorms that have been recognized by a European meteorological agency are described in this article.

The FUB's is the oldest naming system in Europe. It was developed by Karla Wege, a student at the Free University of Berlin's meteorological institute, who suggested that names should be assigned to all areas of low and high pressure that influenced the weather of Central Europe.^[28] The university subsequently started to name every area of high or low pressure within its weather forecasts, from a list of 260 male and 260 female names submitted by its students.^[28][29] The female names were assigned to areas of low pressure while male names were assigned to areas of high pressure.^[28][29]

The names were subsequently exclusively used by Berlin's media until February 1990, after which the German media started to commonly use the names, however, they were not officially approved by the German Meteorological Service Deutscher Wetterdienst.^[28][30] The DWD subsequently banned the usage of the names by their offices during July 1991, after complaints had poured in about the naming system.^[29] However, the order was leaked to the German press agency, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, who ran it as its lead weather story.^[29] Germany's ZDF television channel subsequently ran a phone in poll on 17 July 1991 and claimed that 72% of the 40,000 responses favoured keeping the names.^[31] This made the DWD pause and think about the naming system and these days the DWD accept the naming system and request that it is maintained.^[29][30]

During 1998 a debate started about whether it was discriminatory to name areas of high pressure with male names and the areas of low pressure with female names.^[28] The issue was subsequently resolved by alternating male and female names each year.^[28]

In November 2002 the "Adopt-a-Vortex" scheme was started, which allowed members of the public or companies to buy naming rights for a letter chosen by the buyer, that are then assigned alphabetically to high and low pressure areas in Europe during each year.^[32]

During 2021, the Meteorological Services of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary started to use the names assigned to areas of low pressure by FU Berlin.^[33]

Storms from the FUB are only included if they haven't already been named by another group, or if they are expected to cause damage equal to or greater than storms named by any of the other groups.^{[clarification needed]}

These groups do not officially name European windstorms, but they do recognise windstorms that other agencies have named that affect their countries.^{[citation needed]}

• North-eastern group: Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
• South-eastern Mediterranean group: Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria

Tropical cyclones that form over the northern Atlantic Ocean are named by the United States National Hurricane Center, once they become tropical storms with 1-minute sustained winds of 35 kn (40 mph; 65 km/h). From time to time, tropical cyclones or their remnants impact Europe and retain the name assigned to them by the United States National Hurricane Center.

• Winter storm naming in the United States
• Tropical cyclone naming
• Atlantic hurricane season
• European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
• List of European windstorms

• Met Office UK Storm Centre
• Met Éireann
• About KNMI