Convection-permitting dynamical downscaling (CPDD) allows for an explicit representation of the storm-scale generators of tornadoes, hail, severe thunderstorm winds, and locally heavy precipitation. Possible changes in such hazardous convective weather (HCW) due to human-induced climate change are therefore projected with higher confidence using CPDD than with analyses of relatively coarse global climate models (GCM). However, the computational resources necessary for CPDD are significant and therefore CPDD-based future projections of HCW have tended to be based on a single experiment, and thus absent of uncertainty measures otherwise determined with an ensemble of experiments via an ensemble of GCMs. Herein we present “environment-informed” CPDD as a means to efficiently generate a CPDD ensemble driven by different GCMs. This variant of CPDD is applied only to a subset of days and geographical domains over which the meteorological conditions potentially favor HCW; unnecessary model integrations on meteorologically unfavorable days and domains are thereby eliminated. The selection procedure also accounts for GCM biases.The temporal and geospatial occurrence of historical HCW over the United States is demonstrated from the perspective of environment-informed CPDD as applied to eight different GCMs and ERA5 reanalysis. The overall geographical distributions in HCW vary considerably from downscaled GCM to GCM, thus demonstrating the value of an ensemble. The efficiency in which HCW is realized in favorable environments also varies considerably across the eight downscaled GCMs.

Meteotsunamis are both a well-known and poorly understood phenomenon. In particular, the influence of and disturbance by meteotsunami on coastal wetlands is largely unknown. This paper documents a case illustrating how water levels in an isolated wetland, specifically an incipient foredune/swale complex, in northern Lake Michigan responded to a meteotsunami event. We identified potential meteotsunami influence on wetland water levels through slope-break analysis, verified the presence of meteotsunami waves at surrounding lake water level gauge stations with wavelet analysis, analyzed both regional and small-scale meteorological data to establish what source of atmospheric forcing resulted in meteotsunami formation, and used a hydrodynamic model to simulate lake surface response and meteotsunami generation. Here, we present what we hypothesize reflects an idealized response of wetland water levels to meteotsunami influence where an atmospheric bore propagating away from a convective system formed a meteotsunami event that was captured in subsurface water levels beneath the isolated wetland. While this event produced an obvious response, the potential for multiple sources of meteorological forcing and secondary wave refraction highlights several of the challenges with predicting generation of and hazard from meteotsunami events. These issues equally translate in how the current methodology can be applied to isolated wetland systems. The event presented in this study make a strong case for focused research on coastal wetland response to meteotsunamis (and meteotsunami-like events) to address this understudied impact given its implications for coastal processes and resiliency.