On the relation between avalanche occurrence and avalanche danger level

Schweizer, Jürg; Mitterer, Christoph; Techel, Frank; Stoffel, Andreas; Reuter, Benjamin

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-737-2020

Articles | Volume 14, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-737-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-737-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 2

Research article

|

02 Mar 2020

Research article |

| 02 Mar 2020

On the relation between avalanche occurrence and avalanche danger level

Jürg Schweizer, Christoph Mitterer, Frank Techel, Andreas Stoffel, and Benjamin Reuter

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-737-2020-supplement

Data sets

Snow avalanche data Davos, Switzerland J. Schweizer, C. Mitterer, F. Techel, A. Stoffel, and B. Reuter https://doi.org/10.16904/envidat.134

Short summary

Snow avalanches represent a major natural hazard in seasonally snow-covered mountain regions around the world. To avoid periods and locations of high hazard, avalanche warnings are issued by public authorities. In these bulletins, the hazard is characterized by a danger level. Since the danger levels are not well defined, we analyzed a large data set of avalanches to improve the description. Our findings show discrepancies in present usage of the danger scale and show ways to improve the scale.