To improve the challenging representation of hazardous hailstorms, a proxy for hail frequency based on satellite cloud top detections, convective parameters from high-resolution reanalysis, and crowd-sourced reports, is presented. Hail likelihood peaks in central summer at 15 UTC over northern Italy and shows improved agreement with observations compared to a previous estimate. Separating ambient signatures based on hail severity, enhanced appropriateness for large hail occurrence is found.

We present a thorough investigation of an anomalous transport of mineral dust over a region renowned for excess airborne particulate matter, the Italian Po Valley, which occurred in late March 2021. Both the origin of this dust outbreak, which was localized in central Asia (i.e., the so-called Aralkum Desert), and the upstream synoptic conditions, investigated here in extreme detail using multiple integrated observations including in situ measurements and remote sensing, were atypical.

Irrigation affects the atmosphere and models are required to understand its full impact. However, there is no agreed procedure to describe irrigation within regional models. The present study introduces three new methods to integrate this process into the models and validates it for the Po Valley in northern Italy. All the tests done show that the results are improved with the new irrigation techniques when compared against some measures (e.g., temperature, potential evapotranspiration).

This article aims to provide a critical review of the literature and indicate some directions for future research based on the current knowledge gaps in the area of nature-based solutions (NBSs) for hydro-meteorological risk reduction. The final full analysis was performed on 146 closely related articles. A review showed that many advancements related to NBSs have been made to date, but there are still many challenges that will play an important role in extending knowledge in the coming years.