They will be discussing all aspects of thunderstorms and the climatology of severe weather events, their socioeconomic impact, and risk adjustment.
The conference was organised by the European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL) and the Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service (DHMZ).
ESSL director Pieter Groenemeijer said in his opening remarks that intense convective storms frequently posed a potential risk to human life and property, adding that the time and place of their emergence and their intensity were still difficult to predict and therefore presented one of the greatest challenges in forecasting weather.
This month has shown that the climate has changed to such an extent that extreme weather will be more frequent than it has been so far, DHMZ director Natasa Strelec Mahovic said, emphasising that that's why it is important to learn how storms come about, how they move, what their impact is on people and property and whether there is a way at all to predict them.
Strelec Mahovic said that some areas in Croatia are more susceptible to thunderstorms than others, citing Kvarner, Istria and western Croatia, "because such are the paths of low pressure systems over our areas which bring the largest amounts of rain."
She said that such extreme situations had previously happened once in thirty years. "If they start to occur every other year, it will be a big problem and we will have to decide at national level how to respond to climate change," the DHMZ director said.
The conference ends on Friday.