Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. (2002), 128, pp.

1953–1971

A climatology of mesoscale convective systems over Europe using satellite

infrared imagery. I: Methodology
By C. MOREL¤ and S. SENESI
Météo-France, France

(Received 11 December 2000; revised 23 November 2001)

S UMMARY
An automated method aimed at producing a signiŽ cant European mesoscale convective system (MCS)
climatology is presented. It uses Meteosat infrared window channel images and is composed of two main tools:
an automated cloud-shield tracking method and a robust method of discriminating between convective and non-
convective cloud shields.
The automated cloud-tracking method deŽ nes cloud systems as connected sets of pixels, named ‘cells’,
after temperature and area thresholding and it is based on the overlapping between cells in successive images. It
handles splits and merges of cells and takes cell movement into account. It has three parameters: the temperature
and area thresholds and a minimum overlapping threshold. It is concluded that it performs a correct tracking at
any temperature threshold between ¡30 ± C and ¡55 ± C and for an area threshold greater than 1000 km2 , so that
it allows the tracking of MCSs during most of their life cycle.
The automated discrimination between convective and non-convective cloud shields uses a discrimination
parameter based on brightness-temperature gradients on the edges of cells, because strong values of this gradient
are observed at the beginning of the life cycle of MCSs when cold anvils develop. A seasonal study, and the
sensitivity of the method to the temperature threshold, are presented. The method shows signiŽ cant quality during
the entire warm season (from April to September): it correctly discriminates 80% of MCSs and more than 90% of
the most electrically active ones, while showing a low false-alarm rate around 8%; therefore the method seems to
be useful for climatological purposes.

K EYWORDS: Discrimination Diurnal cycle METEOSAT infrared data Occurrence Satellite features
Tracking Triggering

1. I NTRODUCTION
Mesoscale convective systems (MCSs), which are convective phenomena concern-
ing the meso-® (length-scale l between 250 and 2500 km) and the upper meso-¯ scale
(l between 25 and 250 km), have been widely studied for decades. Despite their rela-
tively small size, MCSs can be dangerous and are frequently accompanied by severe
weather ( ash  ooding, tornadoes and hail) causing many casualties and signiŽ cant
damage (e.g. Sénési et al. 1996).
Nowadays, operational numerical weather-prediction models do not allow a good
representation of MCSs and the forecasting of such systems is still a difŽ cult task,
mainly based on real-time observations and knowledge concerning the environmen-
tal conditions which are favourable for MCS triggering (e.g. Ducrocq et al. 1998).
A possible way to improve MCS forecasting may be multi-parametric tools and con-
ceptual models based on average behaviour of several parameters coming from dif-
ferent observations (satellite, radar images) and model output Ž elds. Currently, such
approaches remain rare and mono-parametric. For example, using radar data, Houze
et al. (1990) correlated MCS organization with severe-weather occurrence. Tollerud
et al. (1992) showed that the use of the initial growth rate of MCS anvils, as sensed
using satellite infrared imagery, could be useful in forecasting MCS duration. The need
for a sound database of MCS characteristics is the Ž rst step required for determining
such statistical results.
Sound MCS climatologies are also very useful for improving our knowledge of
these systems. For example, regional and global databases already exist for mesoscale
¤
Corresponding author: Direction de la Prévision, Météo-France, 42 Avenue G. Coriolis, 31057 Toulouse Cedex,
France. e-mail: Christophe.Morel@meteo.fr
c Royal Meteorological Society, 2002.
°
1953
1954 C. MOREL and S. SENESI

60 o

0o
-20 o

o
20
50 o

40 o

Figure 1. Geographical domain of the infrared images used. The black solid line is the detection limit used in
this study, of the Météorage/Météo-France lightning detection network.

convective complexes (MCCs), which are huge quasi-circular MCSs as deŽ ned by
Maddox (1980), (e.g. Augustine and Howard 1991; Laing and Fritsch 1997). They
were established from the tracking of MCCs in satellite infrared images and led to a
better knowledge of MCC morphological and radiative features. They also allowed a
characterization of their precipitation life cycle (e.g. McAnelly and Cotton 1989) and of
the environmental conditions that are likely to favour MCC occurrence (e.g. Laing and
Fritsch 1997).
In Europe, the scarcity of MCCs (according to Laing and Fritsch 1997) forces us to
focus on smaller and not so well deŽ ned MCSs which may explain why there have been
very few European MCS climatologies. Examples of European MCS climatologies are:
the 313 MCSs over the western Mediterranean studied by Tuduri and Ramis (1997);
the 67 MCSs over Spain described by Carretero and Riosalido (1996); and the 94
convective days over Switzerland analysed by Schiesser et al. (1995). The lack of
sound climatologies is perhaps due to the lack of fully automated methods allowing the
construction of such a database. Sections 2 and 3 present, respectively, an automated
tracking method and a robust discrimination method between convective and non-
convective cloud shields, which are the two basic components of the fully automated
method of building an MCS database. The discrimination quality of this method is
assessed in section 4 and permits the evaluation of the method’s efŽ ciency during warm
seasons.
Part II of this article (Morel and Senesi 2002) presents a European MCS climatol-
ogy which is derived from a Ž ve-warm-season-long MCS database computed with this
method.

(a) The data

The satellite data used were Meteosat 10.8 ¹m infrared images with a 30 minute
time resolution and about a 6 km £ 6 km spatial resolution on a polar stereographic grid.
This is actually a limited oversampling of the original (space view) data, for which the
 CLIMATOLOGY OF EUROPEAN MCS S . I 1955

pixel size is around 8 km in the north–south direction at this latitude. The geographical
domain (see Fig. 1) covers western Europe, the surrounding Atlantic coasts, the western
Mediterranean Sea and northern Africa. The use of only the infrared (IR) channel may
seem restrictive but the visible channel is not available at night when many MCSs
trigger and develop, and the available water-vapour channel archive has a coarser time
resolution than the IR one. Moreover, it will be demonstrated that the IR channel is
self-sufŽ cient in the discrimination of MCSs.
Lightning data from the Météorage/Météo-France lightning detection network were
also used to document the convective systems and as ground truth in order to validate the
purely satellite discrimination method presented in section 3. This lightning detection
network detects cloud-to-ground  ashes and was based on LLP (Lightning Location and
Protection, Inc.) technology (Krider et al. 1976) up until 1997. Its detection efŽ ciency
is around 90% over France and surrounding areas (see Fig. 1) with a spatial accuracy of
less than one Meteosat infrared pixel for most of the  ashes (Tourte et al. 1988).

2. T HE TRACKING METHOD
In tracking methods, the Ž rst step is the detection of cloud systems in order to
deŽ ne ‘cells’ which are the objects representing these clouds. The most common way
to perform this detection is a temperature and an area thresholding in which ‘cells’ are
connected zones of pixels below the temperature threshold that exceed the area threshold
(Woodley et al. 1980). Other methods of detection are rare and more complex (e.g. Peak
and Tag 1994; Boer and Ramanathan 1997). After this detection, a tracking algorithm is
applied to these cells. This algorithm matches the cells from one image to the next one
that corresponds to the same cloud. There are two main kinds of tracking algorithms.
The Ž rst kind is based on the minimization of a cost function using, for example, the
distance and/or the area difference between cells. Such algorithms are presented in
Dixon and Wiener (1993) to track cells in radar images and in Hodges (1994) to track
vorticity cores in general-circulation model output and convective systems over Africa
(Hodges and Thorncroft 1997). The other algorithms use the geographical overlapping
between cells on two consecutive images (e.g. Williams and Houze 1987; Arnaud et al.
1992; Machado et al. 1998).
The tracking method developed here, called ISIS (Instrument de Suivi dans
l’Imagerie Satellitaire), is also based on the overlapping of cells, with the improvement
that it takes into account an estimated movement of clouds to compute the overlap-
ping (section 2(b)). It also smooths instabilities due to the temperature thresholding
(section 2(c)).

(a) Principle of the method

First, ISIS performs a temperature thresholding of infrared images at a threshold
Tth (in practice Tth is between ¡30 ± C and ¡55 ± C). Then, it deŽ nes, through a raster
search (4-connectivity), cells which are connected zones of pixels exceeding an area
threshold Ath (in practice 1000 or 5000 km 2 ). Parameters are computed for each of
the cells, such as the position of the centre of gravity, and some morphological (area,
ellipticity) and radiative (mean temperature gradient, minimum and mean temperatures)
characteristics, together with the number of lightning counts registered under the cell
within (t ¡ 15 min, t C 15 min) where t is the time of the corresponding infrared image.
After having detected cloud systems, their tracking is performed in ISIS. During
this step, ISIS links the cells of the image at time t to the one(s) of the following image
at time t C 1t that correspond(s) to the same cloud system (if there is no missing image
1956 C. MOREL and S. SENESI

~ ovl(C,C’) ovl(2,1’) < tovl

C C ~ 1’
1
V(C)

C’
~
2
2’
(a) (b)

Figure 2. Diagrams illustrating the tracking algorithm principle. (a) DeŽ nition of the overlapping between two
cells. (b) Situation showing the usefulness of the parameter ¿ovl . Solid lines represent cells in the image at time t
and dashed lines represent cells in the image at time t C 1t. See text for further explanation.

1t D 30 minutes). For a given cloud system, this time series of linked cells deŽ nes its
‘trajectory’.
In order to perform the link between cells, a linking rule is deŽ ned which uses the
following deŽ nition of the overlapping:
² Let C be a cell in the image at time t and A.C/ the area of C.
² Let C 0 be a cell in the image at time t C 1t and A.C 0 / the area of C 0 .
² Let V.C/ be the velocity of C (the deŽ nition of V.C/ is given in section 2(b)).
² Let CQ be the cell C translated by V.C/1t .
The overlapping (see Fig. 2(a)) between C and C 0 is then deŽ ned, in a dimensionless
and symmetrical formula, as the overlapping between CQ (the translated cell of C) and
C0:
A.CQ \ C 0 /
ovl.C; C 0 / D :
minfA.C/; A.C 0 /g
The linking rule between two cells is then as follows:
² If the cells C and C 0 only overlap between them (case of Fig. 2(a)), then a link is
created between these two cells whatever the overlapping.
² If the cell C overlaps with more than one cell in the image at time t C 1t (case
of cell 2 in Fig. 2(b)) and/or the cell C 0 overlaps with more than one cell in the image at
time t (case of cell 10 in Fig. 2(b)), then a link is created only if:
ovl.C; C 0 / ¸ ¿ovl where ¿ovl is the minimum overlapping threshold.
In this case, a link between the cell C at time t and the cell C 0 at time t C 1t is
created only if they overlap sufŽ ciently. A diagram showing the extent of this minimum
overlapping threshold ¿ ovl is given in Fig. 2(b). In this situation, there are two cloud
systems (1 and 2) close to each other, and they are moving in the same direction with a
small overlap, which is less than ¿ ovl , between system 2 at time t and system 1 at time
t C 1t. Without an overlapping threshold, a link between cells 2 and 1Q would have been
erroneously created.
 CLIMATOLOGY OF EUROPEAN MCS S . I 1957

Figure 3. Example of a ‘complex’ case. Images of 10 July 1995 at 1930 and 2000 UTC . Meaning of symbols
attached to the cells are: a circle stands for the beginning of a trajectory, a cross for the end of a trajectory, a thick
line for an ongoing trajectory, a dashed line for splits or merges of trajectories. See text for further explanation.

By using this rule, it is possible to deŽ ne the following events:

² The beginning of a trajectory: a cell at time t C 1t is linked with no cell at time t.
² The end of a trajectory: a cell at time t is linked with no cell at time t C 1t.
² A split of trajectories: a cell at time t is linked to more than one cell at time
t C 1t.
² A merge of trajectories: a cell at time t C 1t is linked to more than one cell at
time t.
² A ‘complex case’. It occurs when a simultaneous merge and split occur between
the same cells (same case as in Fig. 2(b) except that the overlapping between 2 and 1 0 is
larger than the minimum overlapping threshold ¿ ovl ). An example of such a ‘complex’
case is given in Fig. 3 (with T th D ¡45 ± C and A th D 1000 km2 ). In this Ž gure, pixels
with a temperature colder than or equal to T th are shown in grey (each connected grey
area is then a cell tracked by ISIS). Each cell is identiŽ ed by its number, the position
of its centre of gravity (small cross) and a symbol (see Fig. 3 caption). In this example,
cell 9 at 1930 UTC splits into cells 12 and 14 at 2000 UTC, and the latter cell comes from
the merging of cell 13 with a part of cell 9 at 1930 UTC.
The tracking decisions during splits, merges and ‘complex’ cases are the same as in
Machado et al. (1998) or Mathon and Laurent (2001): the biggest cell at time t C 1t is
linked to the trajectory of the biggest cell at time t; the trajectories of the other cells at
time t end, and the other cells at time t C 1t start new trajectories.
Finally, in order to deal with missing images, ISIS has the following rules:
² If 1t > 2:5 hours, all the ongoing trajectories in the image at time t end, and all
the cells detected at time t C 1t start new trajectories. These two kinds of trajectories
are labelled as ‘interrupted by too many missing images’.
² If 1:5 < 1t 6 2:5 hours, all the ongoing trajectories having a cell area at time t
smaller than 7000 km 2 end. The tracking of the other trajectories is done ‘normally’,
i.e. following the linking rule. A trajectory, for which a link between its cell at time t
and a cell at time t C 1t is found, is labelled as an ‘over-crossing’ trajectory. This kind
of trajectory was introduced in order to avoid a systematic interruption of the tracking
1958 C. MOREL and S. SENESI

Advected cells at date t

1’ Cells at date t + Dt

2’

~
1 3’

~
2

Figure 4. Diagram illustrating direct parental links (for instance between cells 10 and 20 ) and indirect parental
links (for instance between cells 10 and 30 ).

of large and well developed cloud systems during the periods of equinoctial satellite
eclipses.
² If 1t 6 1:5 hours, then the tracking is done ‘normally’.

(b) Estimation of the velocity of cloud systems

Previous methods used to track convective systems from satellite images are based
on a ‘direct’ computation of the overlapping (i.e. they do not take into account cloud
systems movement to compute the overlapping). Even if it could be justiŽ ed for large
cloud systems, it is not efŽ cient to track clouds as small as 1000 km 2 for which it was
observed that ‘direct’ overlapping does not systematically exist with an image time
period of 30 minutes. In ISIS, the velocity of a given cell is estimated from the position
of the centre of gravity and is deŽ ned as follows:
² The velocity of a given cell does not only depend upon its ‘instantaneous’
movement (i.e. the positions of the centres of gravity of this cell and of the previous
cell linked to it) but it also takes into account the velocities of all the previous cells
of the same trajectory. This allows the reduction of noisy movements of the centre of
gravity observed, for instance, when the area of the cloud system grows rapidly.
² The cells detected in a given image and having either a direct or an indirect
parental link between them (see Fig. 4) are considered as a ‘group’. All these cells
have the same velocity, which is estimated from the global movement of this group of
cells. This allows the prevention of spurious movements during splits and merges.
Taking into account these two points leads to a relatively complex deŽ nition of
cell velocity. More precisely, the velocity V.C 0 / of a cell C 0 detected at time t C 1t is
deŽ ned as follows:
² If C 0 is the Ž rst cell of a trajectory then V.C 0 / is initialized as the velocity of the
nearest cell at time t C 1t. If the centre of gravity of this nearest cell is further than
500 km from the centre of gravity of C 0 then V.C 0 / is initialized as zero.
 CLIMATOLOGY OF EUROPEAN MCS S . I 1959

Figure 5. Case with an instability due to the temperature thresholding. Sequence of images between 2330 UTC
10 July 1995 and 0100 UTC 11 July 1995. See Fig. 3 caption for the meaning of the symbols.

² Otherwise,
» ³ ´ X ¼
0 1 1 X A.p/ X
V.C / D P P A.f /PF C A.p/V.p/
2 p2 A.p/ 1t p2 f 2 p A.f / f 2 p2 p

where:
– is the set of the cells at time t having a parental link (either direct or indirect)
with C 0 . For instance, for cell 1 0 of Fig. 4, this set is composed of 1Q (direct parental
link) and 2Q (indirect parental link).
– p is a cell at time t of set .
– p is the set of cells at time t C 1t which overlap sufŽ ciently with cell p.
– f is a cell at time t C 1t of the set p .
– A.:/ is the area of the considered cell.
– PF is the vector between the centres of gravity of p and f .
– V.p/ is the velocity of cell p.
Note that for the simplest case (case of Fig. 2(a)), the velocity is:
1 CC0 1
V.C 0 / D C V.C/
2 1t 2
where CC0 is the vector between the centres of gravity of C and C 0 .

(c) Elimination of instabilities due to the temperature threshold

The main beneŽ t of using a temperature thresholding to deŽ ne cells is its simplicity.
The drawback is that if there is more than one cold core below this temperature threshold
in the same cloud system, then the system is split into several cells. This may generate
some instabilities (sharp variations of the direction, the area : : : ) in the tracked cloud
systems caused by artiŽ cial successive splits and merges in the tracking of cloud systems
for which the different cold cores are successively slightly colder and slightly warmer
than the temperature threshold. Such a case is illustrated in Fig. 5 for 11 July 1995
around 00 UTC near Belgium with a temperature threshold T th D ¡40 ± C. The tracking
analysis of this sequence shows that the trajectory of cell 8 at 0030 UTC begins and ends
at that hour. Indeed, this cell comes from the split of cell 6 at 0000 UTC, is smaller than
cell 7 at 0030 UTC, and merges in the next image with the latter cell.
An automated detection and elimination of these instabilities was developed and
leads to a better tracking of cloud systems in such situations. More precisely, the tracking
1960 C. MOREL and S. SENESI

7 10
o
Tth= ­ 40 C (a) 9 Ath= 1000km
2
(b)
6 o
Tth= ­ 45 C Ath= 5000km
2

o 8 2
5
Tth= ­ 50 C Ath= 10 000km
7
Density unit (%)

Density unit (%)

4 6
5
3 4
2 3
2
1
1
0 0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
Overlapping Overlapping

Figure 6. Distributions of overlapping values: (a) for a Ž xed value of area threshold (Ath D 1000 km2 ) and
different values of temperature threshold (Tth D ¡40 ± C, ¡45 ± C and ¡50 ± C), (b) for a Ž xed value of Tth
(¡45 ± C) and different values of Ath (1000 km2 , 5000 km2 and 10 000 km2 ).

decisions consider that there is only one cloud system to track even in images where two
cells are detected. For instance, in the example of Fig. 5, cell 6 at 0000 UTC is linked to
a ‘pseudo cell’ which is made of the union of cells 7 and 8 at 0030 UTC . This ‘pseudo
cell’ is then linked to cell 8 at 0100 UTC.

(d) Tuning of the overlapping threshold ¿ ovl

The tuning of the overlapping threshold ¿ ovl is very important because ¿ ovl is
directly responsible for the quality of the tracking. Indeed, overly large values of ¿ ovl
can lead to piece-wise trajectories for a single cloud system, and values of ¿ ovl which
are too small can make the tracking fail in a case like Fig. 2(b).
Figures 6(a) and 6(b) show the distribution of the overlapping values encountered
during July 1996 related to different values of T th and Ath . The shape of all these
distributions is the same in all cases. They all show two maxima located at the same
values, the absolute one near 0.85 and a relatively small one near 0. For at least
75% of the cases, the overlapping is greater than 0.6. This shows that tracking cells
using overlapping is possible because there effectively exists some strong overlapping
between cells. After a visual examination of some cases with very low overlapping near
zero, it was concluded that these cases are mainly due to situations like Fig. 2(b), where
two distinct cloud systems are close to each other. The maximum near zero then shows
the usefulness of an overlapping threshold in performing a better tracking.
The comparison of the three distributions, shown in Fig. 6(a), obtained with a
Ž xed value of A th (1000 km2 ) and different values of T th (¡40 ± C, ¡45 ± C and
¡50 ± C) shows that the distribution of the overlapping values is largely insensitive to
the temperature threshold and so should be the value of ¿ ovl . The sensitivity of ¿ ovl to
the area threshold is addressed in Fig. 6(b). The closeness of the three distributions of
the overlapping values obtained with different values of A th (1000 km 2 , 5000 km 2 and
10 000 km2 ) shows that there is very little dependency of ¿ ovl on the area threshold.
Nevertheless, even if the shape remains the same, these three distributions are not
as similar as those obtained when varying the temperature threshold. Indeed, the
absolute maximum value decreases with the area threshold and the proportion of small
overlapping values increases when the area threshold decreases. This is due to the fact
that the smaller cells are more difŽ cult to track than the bigger ones. A Ž nal sensitivity
 CLIMATOLOGY OF EUROPEAN MCS S . I 1961

test of ¿ovl to the season (not presented) was done by comparing the distributions of
the overlapping values occurring during January and July 1996. Here again, the two
distributions were nearly the same.
Consequently, a constant value of ¿ ovl was chosen whatever the temperature thresh-
old, the area threshold and the image date. After a visual examination of around 80
cases which overlap with more than one cell and have at least one overlapping value
lower than 0.25, ¿ ovl was Ž xed at 0.15.

(e) Conclusion concerning the ISIS tracking method

After a visual veriŽ cation of the tracking algorithm decisions over a number of
cases (one day of infrared images), it is concluded that the tracking obtained with ISIS
is accurate at any temperature threshold between ¡30 ± C and ¡55 ± C, and at any area
threshold greater than 1000 km 2 . Consequently, for the purpose of MCS tracking, this
method is very satisfactory and these systems are correctly described during their life
cycle, from the growing phase to the dissipation phase. Indeed, the temperatures of MCS
cold anvils are often colder or within the prescribed range of temperature thresholds. In
addition, an area threshold as low as 1000 km 2 allows the coverage of the meso-® and
most of the meso-¯ scale.
A lower area threshold seems to be out of range for such a method as long as the
time resolution of available satellite images is 30 minutes, because the overlapping of
small cells between two consecutive images is hazardous. The computation of velocity
for these small cells is also a difŽ cult task that can be responsible for poor tracking.

3. C ONVECTIVE - SYSTEMS DISCRIMINATION

After the design of a tracking algorithm which reconstitutes the trajectories of cloud
systems, the next problem to solve in order to build an MCS database is to discriminate
MCS trajectories from other cloud-system trajectories. The ‘simplest’ way to achieve
this is through a visual examination of all the trajectories. This method is very robust
but time consuming. Another way is to try to deŽ ne objectively what an MCS trajectory
is by introducing criteria and discrimination parameters. This is the approach of all the
MCC climatologies which use the MCC deŽ nition of Maddox (1980). This deŽ nition
is based on minimum areas at two temperature thresholds, a minimum duration and a
shape criteria at the time of maximum extent (using the ellipticity of the cell).
Objective satellite-based deŽ nitions of MCSs which are not MCCs are rare. Adler
et al. (1987) used a slope parameter of temperature near pixels of minimum temperature
in Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite imagery to detect severe thun-
derstorms. Delgado et al. (1992) performed this discrimination by means of a quasi-
objective method using visible and infrared Meteosat imagery, showing that MCSs have
very low temperatures and high albedos. Other possible MCS signatures in satellite
imagery are the V-shape and the cold–warm couplet observed for some MCS anvils in
the infrared channel (McCann 1983), but these have not been used yet in an objective
way and are features indicating the most severe events.

(a) Methodology
In order to Ž nd an automated method to discriminate between MCS trajectories and
other ones, three steps were identiŽ ed:
1962 C. MOREL and S. SENESI

1) The search for a discrimination parameter at a given temperature threshold.

2) The sensitivity of the discrimination obtained with this parameter to the temper-
ature threshold.
3) The seasonal sensitivity of the discrimination obtained with the best discrimina-
tion parameter at the best temperature threshold.
To achieve the Ž rst step, the ISIS tracking algorithm was run over six months from
April to September 1995 at a temperature threshold of ¡45 ± C and an area threshold of
1000 km 2 . This run led to a Ž rst set of trajectories composed only of those exceeding, at
some stage, an area threshold A min D 10 000 km2 , starting ‘normally’ (not after a split
or a complex case) and having at least one cell with its centre of gravity located inside
the detection domain of the Météorage/Météo-France lightning network (see Fig. 1).
A split of this Ž rst set into two samples, a convective one and a non-convective
one, was performed using the lightning data of the Météorage/Météo-France lightning
detection network which were taken as ground truth. More precisely, the convective
sample was composed of all the trajectories having more than Ž ve lightning events
registered under at least one cell. The non-convective sample was composed of all the
trajectories with no lightning event registered under any of their cells. This led to a
convective sample composed of N cv D 177 trajectories and a non-convective one with
Nncv D 64 trajectories.
The MCS discrimination criteria which were investigated are of the form:
> Dth
where is a given parameter such as ellipticity or mean brightness-temperature
gradient, and D th is a threshold value called the discrimination threshold.
In order to determine the best discrimination parameter, the rate of false alarms
(FAR) and the percentage of good detections (POD) were evaluated at different dis-
crimination thresholds for each parameter (section 3(b)). FAR and POD were deŽ ned as
follows:
Nfalse Ngood
FAR D 100 and POD D 100
Ngood C Nfalse Ncv
where:
Ngood is the number of convective trajectories that verify the MCS discrimination
criteria. These trajectories are called ‘good detections’.
Nfalse is the number of non-convective trajectories that verify the MCS discrimina-
tion criteria. These trajectories are called ‘false alarms’.
The second step (tuning of the temperature threshold using this best discrimination
parameter) was done in a similar way (section 3(c)). Convective and non-convective
samples were built at different temperature thresholds and the discrimination quality
obtained with the best discrimination parameter was compared using FAR and POD.
Finally, the seasonal sensitivity to the discrimination method gained after the two
Ž rst steps was studied (section 3(d)). This led to an adjustment of the discrimination
threshold Dth versus the month.

(b) Search for the best discrimination parameter

After having tried many parameters based on morphology (such as ellipticity) or
radiative characteristics (such as gradients or area ratios at two temperature thresholds),
the best discrimination was obtained with the maximum value of the 95th percentile of
the peripheral brightness-temperature gradient along the trajectory: max(PG 95 ).
 CLIMATOLOGY OF EUROPEAN MCS S . I 1963

25 25
(a) (b)
Percentage of false alarms

Percentage of false alarms

20 20

15 15

10 10

5 5

0 0
50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
Percentage of good detections Percentage of good detections

Figure 7. (a) Quality obtained with the ellipticity at the time of maximum extent (circles), the maximum of the
mean peripheral gradient (squares) and the max(PG95 ) (see text, thick solid line). (b) Quality obtained with the
max(PG95 ) at different temperature thresholds: ¡35 ± C (circles), ¡40 ± C (squares), ¡45 ± C (thick solid line),
and ¡50 ± C (triangles).

More precisely, local brightness temperature gradients are evaluated for each pixel
located on the edge of the cell using the following equation:
q
1
PG.i; j / D fTB .i ¡ 1; j / ¡ TB .i C 1; j /g2 C fTB .i; j ¡ 1/ ¡ TB .i; j C 1/g 2
2d
where:
PG.i; j / is the local brightness-temperature gradient computed at pixel .i; j /.
d is the size of pixel .i; j / (km).
TB .:; :/ is the brightness temperature of pixel .:; :/.
All these local values deŽ ne the distribution of the peripheral gradient of the cell.
Then, PG 95 is deŽ ned as the 95th percentile of this distribution. Max(PG 95 ) is then the
maximum of the PG 95 values of the cells that composed this trajectory.
Figure 7(a) presents the quality obtained with several parameters in a diagram
showing FAR versus POD. These parameters are: the ellipticity at time of maximum
extent, e.A max /, which is the shape criteria used to deŽ ne MCCs, the maximum value
along the trajectory of the mean of the peripheral gradient of the cells, max(PG moy ),
and the parameter max(PG 95 ). The discrimination threshold, D th , was varied between
0 and 1 for the ellipticity and 0 and 4 degC km ¡1 for the two parameters based on
the peripheral gradient. It can be seen that the use of the ellipticity e.A max / is not
relevant for the discrimination of electrically active MCSs, but that parameters based
on the peripheral gradient are. Indeed, whatever the discrimination threshold D th , there
is always more than 15% of false alarms with e.A max /, while FAR obtained with the
max(PGmoy ) or the max(PG95 ) stays very low even for high POD. Besides, among
parameters based on the peripheral gradient, the best discrimination was obtained with
max(PG95 ). Thanks to this parameter, a FAR lower than 3% was obtained up until a
POD of 80% and around 90% of the convective trajectories were discriminated with a
FAR of around 10%. These latter values are reached at a discrimination threshold of
1.7 degC km ¡1 .

(c) Search for the best temperature threshold

The sensitivity of the discrimination technique to the temperature threshold is
addressed using only max(PG 95 )-based decisions. This means that the quality of other
1964 C. MOREL and S. SENESI

350 100
(a) (b)
90
300

Percentage of trajectories
80
Number of trajectories

250 70

200 60
50
150 40
100 30
20
50
10
0 0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Month Month

Figure 8. (a) Number of trajectories in convective (solid line) and non-convective (dashed line) monthly samples.
(b) Quality obtained with max(PG95 ) at a temperature threshold D ¡45 ± C for each month: percentage of good
detections POD (solid line), percentage of false alarms FAR (dashed line), climatological FAR (circles).

parameters at temperature thresholds not equal to ¡45 ± C was not studied; this may
seem restrictive but is justiŽ ed by the signiŽ cant quality already gained with this
parameter.
Convective and non-convective samples were computed by running the tracking
algorithm at different temperature thresholds, and they were derived similarly to the
samples at T th D ¡45 ± C (see section 3(a)). Nevertheless, to avoid a bias in the calcula-
tion of FAR and POD due to large variations of the size of the samples with the temper-
ature threshold, the parameter A min , which is the minimum area that trajectories have to
exceed in order to be kept in the samples, was varied with the temperature threshold in
order to keep nearly the same number of trajectories whatever the temperature threshold.
The Amin values were, respectively, 16 000 km 2 at Tth D ¡35 ± C, 13 000 km 2 at Tth D
¡40 ± C, 10 000 km 2 at Tth D ¡45 ± C and 6000 km 2 at Tth D ¡50 ± C. The numbers
of trajectories in the different samples (convective/non-convective) were, respectively,
173=92, 174=72, 177=64 and 170=45.
Figure 7(b) shows the discrimination quality for these different temperature thresh-
olds. The conclusion is that the best discrimination quality is gained at temperature
thresholds of ¡40 ± C and ¡45 ± C with very few differences between these two thresh-
olds: on the one hand, a threshold of ¡45 ± C leads to slightly better results for FAR
lower than 8% and on the other hand, the quality obtained with a threshold of ¡40 ± C
is slightly better for a value of FAR of 10% or more. Hereafter, the choice was made to
use a temperature threshold of ¡45 ± C.

(d ) Seasonal sensitivity of the discrimination

In order to study the seasonal sensitivity of the discrimination quality shown in the
previous section using a discrimination threshold of 1.7 degC km ¡1 for every month,
ISIS was run over Ž ve years from 1 January 1993 to 31 December 1997 at a temperature
threshold of ¡45 ± C and an area threshold of 1000 km 2 .
Then, monthly convective and non-convective samples were built using lightning
data and the methodology described in section 3(a). The number of trajectories in
each of these samples is given in Fig. 8(a). As expected, the convective activity
begins in April, then seems to reach a plateau during May and June and increases
again until August (296 cases). A rapid fall in this activity is then observed from
 CLIMATOLOGY OF EUROPEAN MCS S . I 1965

September until March with very few cases from January to March. The number of non-
convective trajectories throughout the year also shows an expected pattern with more
non-convective trajectories during winter, due to fronts, than during summer (more than
200 trajectories from November to February compared with less than 50 trajectories
between June and August).
Figure 8(b) displays POD and FAR obtained at a discrimination threshold of
1.7 degC km ¡1 versus month. It shows the following:
² From June to August, the discrimination is very satisfactory with a FAR near 5%
and a POD near 90%.
² For April, May and September, FAR is larger than 20% showing that the discrim-
ination threshold of 1.7 degC km ¡1 is not adapted for these months. By increasing the
discrimination threshold, it is possible to reduce this rather large FAR, but in exchange,
POD decreases. By choosing a discrimination threshold of 2 degC km ¡1 , a compromise
is found and leads to a FAR equal to 8% and a POD of nearly 82% for the warm season
(i.e. from April to September).
² For the other months, the discrimination is inefŽ cient. Indeed, no compromise is
found which may simultaneously obtain a low FAR and a high POD.
Finally, a way to ensure that the discrimination method is useful during warm seasons
is to compare the FAR of the discrimination method with the climatological FAR. The
climatological FAR is deŽ ned for each month as:
Nncv
FARclim D 100 :
Nncv C Ncv
The difference between these two FARs is a measure of the quality gained by using
the discrimination method. Figure 8(b) shows that the climatological FAR is always
larger than the FAR obtained with the discrimination method, and that the improvement
is signiŽ cant for a number of months (April, May, June, September and October). For
instance, in June FAR clim is around 22% and the discrimination-method FAR obtained
by using a 1.7 degC km ¡1 discrimination threshold is around 6% with a POD of 91%.

(e) Conclusion
An automated MCS discrimination method was designed using only satellite in-
frared images. It is based on cloud tracking at a temperature threshold of ¡45 ± C and
a discrimination parameter: the maximum of the 95th percentile of the peripheral gra-
dient along the trajectory. A signiŽ cant discrimination quality was obtained over warm
seasons (from April to September). More precisely, by using a discrimination threshold
of 1.7 degC km ¡1 in June, July and August, and of 2 degC km ¡1 in April, May and
September, the method is able to discriminate around 82% of the MCSs with a FAR
limited to 8%.
A physical interpretation of the efŽ ciency of the peripheral gradient for the discrim-
ination of MCSs, which actually directed the design of such a parameter, can be found
in the way MCSs develop. At the beginning of their life cycle, MCSs are composed
of active convective towers which lead to a rapid horizontal expansion of cold cirrus
cloud anvils. The infrared imagery patterns of these developing anvils are connected
zones of pixels of low brightness temperature with sharp temperature gradients near
their edge. A thresholding at a ‘sufŽ ciently cold’ brightness temperature of these anvils
and a computation of the peripheral brightness-temperature gradients should then appear
as a natural way to detect these MCS anvil properties.
1966 C. MOREL and S. SENESI

100 95
90
Percentage of trajectories

80
90
70
60

POD (%)
50 85
40
30
80
20
10 (a) (b)
0 75
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10
2 2
Maximum lightning density (in flashes/km /hour) Maximum lightning density (in flashes/km /hour)

Figure 9. (a) Accumulated distributions of maximum lightning density for the convective sample (thick solid
line), for the non-discriminated warm-season mesoscale convective systems (MCSs, circles), and for the convec-
tive sample of autumnal and wintry MCSs (squares). (b) Sensitivity of discrimination efŽ ciency to the maximum
lightning density.

4. P ERFORMANCES AND LIMITS OF THE DISCRIMINATION METHOD

In order to study the quality of the MCS discrimination method, as tuned in the
previous section, the tracking and discrimination methods were run over the Ž ve warm
seasons (from April to September) between 1993 and 1997. This led to a Ž rst set of
trajectories composed only of those exceeding, at some stage, an area of 10 000 km 2 ,
and starting ‘normally’. Then, different samples of trajectories were built from this Ž rst
set:
² The ‘convective sample’ (1053 trajectories) is composed of all the trajectories
having at least one cell located inside the detection domain of the Météorage/Météo-
France lightning detection network (see Fig. 1) and having more than Ž ve lightning
 ashes registered under at least one cell.
² The ‘non-convective sample’ (453 trajectories) is composed of all the trajectories
occurring under the same geographical domain and having no lightning registered under
any of their cells.
² The ‘non-discriminated MCS sample’ (193 trajectories) is composed of the
trajectories of the ‘convective sample’ which do not verify the discrimination criteria
(i.e. having a max(GP95 ) lower than the discrimination thresholds given in section 3(e)).
² The ‘discriminated sample’ (936 trajectories) is composed of all the trajectories
(coming from the ‘convective’ and the ‘non-convective’ samples) which verify the
discrimination criteria.

(a) Characterization of non-discriminated mesoscale convective systems

In section 3, it was concluded that the percentage of good detections of MCSs
is equal to 90% from June to August and 82% from to April to September. In this
section, the electrical activity of the 20% non-discriminated MCSs is analysed. The
electrical activity of a system is measured here by its maximum lightning density, d max ,
registered along its trajectory (d max is expressed in number of lightning  ashes per
square kilometre per hour, evaluated over half-hour intervals).
Figure 9(a) displays d max accumulated distributions for the convective sample and
for the non-discriminated MCS sample. It can be seen that most of the non-discriminated
MCSs have a low electrical activity (61% have a d max lower than 0.01 lightning
 CLIMATOLOGY OF EUROPEAN MCS S . I 1967

 ashes km ¡2 h¡1 ), and that the proportion of these low electrically active MCSs which
are not discriminated is very high compared with the convective sample (only 18% of
MCSs have a d max lower than 0.005 lightning  ashes km ¡2 h¡1 compared with 48% for
the non-discriminated MCSs).
The study of the sensitivity of POD to the maximum lightning density is displayed
in Fig 9(b). It shows that the discrimination method is more efŽ cient for the most
electrically active MCSs. At a given maximum density of lightning, d 0 , the POD above
d0 (i.e. the POD of convective systems having a d max > d0 ) is deŽ ned as:
Ngood
POD D 100
Ncv
where:
Ngood is the number of trajectories having a d max greater than d 0 and which comply
with the MCS discrimination criteria.
Ncv is the number of trajectories having a d max greater than d 0 .
This Ž gure shows that POD is increasing with the maximum lightning density,
therefore MCSs with strong electrical activity are better discriminated. For instance,
the method discriminates ‘only’ around 85% of the MCSs with a d max lower than 0.002
lightning  ashes km ¡2 h¡1 but 90% of the MCSs with a d max greater than 0.01 lightning
 ashes km ¡2 h¡1 . Figure 9(b) shows also that POD values seem to reach a plateau of
93% for the most electrically active events (the observed instabilities of POD for MCSs
having a d max greater than 0.05 lightning  ashes km ¡2 h¡1 are due to small values of
Ngood and N cv ).
Finally, the d max accumulated distribution for convective systems occurring in
autumn and winter (from October to March for the years 1993 to 1997) is shown
in Fig. 9(a). The majority of them have weak electrical activity with more than 65%
having a d max lower than 0.01 lightning  ashes km ¡2 h¡1 compared with only 27% for
warm-season MCSs. The fact that non-discriminated warm-season MCSs are weakly
electrically active may also explain why the method is less efŽ cient for these months.

(b) Characterization of false alarms

According to the discrimination method presented in section 3, false alarms are
non-convective cloud systems with no collocated lightning data which have a maximum
of the 95th percentile of the peripheral gradient along the trajectory greater than the
discrimination threshold (1.7 degC km ¡1 or 2 degC km ¡1 depending on the month). It
was concluded that 5% of the false alarms occur during summer and around 8% during
a whole warm season.
Figure 10 displays the geographical density of the triggering of false alarms
occurring during Ž ve warm seasons (from April to September for the years 1993 to
1997). The plotted triggering density is the number of false alarms which were Ž rst
detected over the considered pixel. The time of Ž rst detection of a cloud system is
deŽ ned as the Ž rst time when the cloud system area at ¡45 ± C is larger than 1000 km 2 .
More precisely, this triggering density map is the density of the best-Ž t ellipses at time
of Ž rst detection, each ellipse being multiplied by a factor of three in order to smooth
the density. The large solid line indicates the limits of the lightning-network detection
domain used in this study. Outside these limits, the triggering density of false alarms is
biased and so has not been plotted.
An area of maximum triggering of false alarms is observed north of the Pyrenees all
along the mountain range. A visual examination of some cases showed that they are due
1968 C. MOREL and S. SENESI

10

12

Figure 10. Density of the triggering of false alarms (in number of false alarms). The black solid line represents
the detection limit of the Météorage/M étéo-France lightning detection network.

70 40
(a) (b)
60 35
Percentage of trajectories

Percentage of trajectories

30
50
25
40
20
30
15
20
10
10 5
0 0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 1000 3000 5000 7000 9000
2
Duration Dtdiscri (hours) Area at discrimination time (km )

Figure 11. (a) Distribution of the duration between the time of Ž rst detection and discrimination time for the
‘discriminated’ sample of trajectories. (b) Distribution of the area at discrimination time for the ‘discriminated’
sample of trajectories.

to orographic cloud shields under strong south-western  ows in the lee of the Pyrenees.
Strong peripheral gradients responsible for the failure of the discrimination method are
located along the quasi-stationary southern edge of the systems which is parallel to the
ridge of the Pyrenees.

(c) Study of the discrimination time

The discrimination time is deŽ ned as the Ž rst time when the 95th percentile of the
peripheral gradient is larger than the discrimination threshold. It can be different from
the time when the maximum of the 95th percentile of the peripheral gradient is reached.
The distribution of the duration, 1tdiscri , between the time of Ž rst detection (Ž rst image
 CLIMATOLOGY OF EUROPEAN MCS S . I 1969

in which the cloud system exceeds an area of 1000 km 2 ) and the discrimination time for
the ‘discriminated’ sample of trajectories is displayed in Fig. 11(a). It shows that the use
of peripheral brightness-temperature gradients allows the discrimination of the MCSs
at the very beginning of their life cycle. Indeed, around 88% of the ‘discriminated’
trajectories are discriminated within less than one hour after the Ž rst detection.
The distribution of the area at discrimination time is shown in Fig. 11(b) and
conŽ rms that the discrimination time happens very soon in the life cycle of discriminated
trajectories when cloud shields have small areas. For instance, around 80% of the
cases have an area smaller than 5000 km 2 and 60% smaller than 3000 km 2 at their
discrimination time.
These two results reinforce the physical explanation of stronger peripheral gradients
for MCSs than for other systems. The fact that strong values of this parameter occur
preferentially at the beginning of the trajectories of convective systems is in good
agreement with the known anvil spreading of MCSs at the beginning of their life cycle.

5. C ONCLUSION
A fully automated method for building an MCS database was designed. It uses the
time evolution of the so-called cloud-system peripheral brightness-temperature gradient.
This time evolution is analysed by a cloud-system tracking algorithm which uses a
sequence of satellite infrared images.
The ISIS tracking method is based on the overlapping of cloud systems from one
image to the next. The main improvement compared with previous methods is that it
takes into account an estimated velocity of cloud systems in order to compute their
overlapping which is necessary for the tracking of small clouds. It is concluded that
the method performs a good tracking at any temperature threshold between ¡30 ± C
and ¡55 ± C with an area threshold greater than 1000 km 2 . These performances seem
satisfactory for the tracking of MCSs which exceed 10 000 km 2 , and it allows a complete
description of the MCS life cycle from their growing phase to their dissipation.
Concerning the automated discrimination method of MCSs, it was shown that it
is possible to discriminate warm season MCSs from other cloud systems using only
infrared images. This method is based on a discrimination parameter: the maximum
of the 95th percentile of the peripheral gradient along the trajectory (max(GP 95 )).
Indeed, observed values of this parameter are stronger for MCSs than for non-convective
systems. An extensive study of the tuning and the quality of this method has been
presented. The best temperature threshold has been Ž xed at ¡45 ± C. Discrimination
thresholds were Ž xed for each month: 1.7 degC km ¡1 for June, July and August and
2 degC km¡1 for April, May and September.
The corresponding quality was quantiŽ ed using lightning data from the French
Météorage/Météo-France network as ground truth. It was shown that signiŽ cant accu-
racy is obtained during warm seasons: the discrimination method is able to detect 82%
of the MCSs with at least Ž ve lightning  ashes registered under a cell, and it has a
false-alarm rate of only 8%. A thorough study of non-detected MCSs showed that they
were mainly weakly electrically active and that around 93% of MCSs with a lightning
density greater than 20 lightning  ashes per thousand square kilometres per hour were
correctly discriminated. False alarms were also identiŽ ed and proved to be mainly due
to orographic cloud systems occurring in the lee of mountain ranges. Finally, a physical
interpretation of these observed stronger values of the peripheral gradient for MCSs was
proposed: early stages of cold anvils during the growing phase of MCSs could show
strong values of the peripheral gradient due to their sharp edges.
1970 C. MOREL and S. SENESI

In conclusion, an original automated discrimination method of MCSs was presented

and fully validated over a geographical domain including France and surrounding areas.
This validation was feasible thanks to lightning data available over this domain. Given
the physical interpretation of the method, it is assumed that it remains valid outside of
this domain and all over Europe. A posteriori veriŽ cation of this assumption is given in
the second part of this paper (Morel and Senesi 2002). This method was applied over
Ž ve warm seasons between 1993 and 1997 and the derived European MCS climatology
is presented in Part II of this paper (Morel and Senesi 2002).

Adler, R. F., Woodward, R. H. and
Mack, R. A.
Arnaud, Y., Desbois, M. and
Maizi, J.
Augustine, J. A. and Howard, K. H.
Boer, E. R. and Ramanathan, V.
Carretero, O. and Riosalido, R.
Delgado, J. A., Casanova, J. L.,
Illera, P. and Perez, A. M.
Dixon, M. and Wiener, G.
Ducrocq, V., Tzanos, D. and
Sénési, S.
Hodges, K. I.
Hodges, K. I. and Thorncroft, C. D.
Houze Jr., R. A., Smull, B. F. and
Dodge, P.
Krider, E. P., Noyle, R. C. and
Ulman, M. A.
Laing, A. G. and Fritsch, J. M.
McAnelly, R. L. and Cotton, W. R.
McCann, D. W.
Machado, L. A. T., Rossow, W. B.,
Guedes, R. L. and
Walker, A. W.
Maddox, R. A.
Mathon, V. and Laurent, H.
Morel, C. and Senesi, S.
Peak, J. E. and Tag, P. M.
Schiesser, H. H., Houze Jr., R. A.
and Huntrieser, H.
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