Hydrological impacts

In early June 2025, a rare winter storm brought heavy snowfall to the highlands of Lesotho. This case study shows how the near–real-time H SAF H43 snow cover extent (SCE) product, based on MTG-FCI observation, captured the rapid evolution and depletion of snow in the days following the event. The high spatial and temporal resolution of the MTG-FCI provides possibility to clear the clouds and gives information about snow dynamics daily.

In September 2023, a destructive Mediterranean cyclone caused severe storms in the eastern Mediterranean regions. It first hit Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey bringing heavy rain causing extensive flooding and casualties. In the following days it intensified, moving towards the Libyan coast where two dams collapsed resulting in flooding that caused thousands of deaths.

End of November and at the beginning of December 2023, Germany was faced with wide-spread and intense snowfall, leading to an elevated risk of flooding when snow started to melt. The present case study assesses the quality of HSAF SWE-H (in the following referred to as H65) data, compared to other data products for daily estimates of snow-water equivalent (SWE) on point-scale and catchment scale (1,000 to 10,000 km^2).

More than 1700 people were killed, 33 million affected, and more than two million homes were damaged or destroyed. It was one of the costliest natural disasters ever recorded. Communities in affected regions continue to face humanitarian emergencies. Comments by the Remote Sensing Expert, Dr. Wolfgang Wagner.

In October 2022, flooding in the country’s south submerged homes and farmland, and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. After prolonged and intense rains, widespread flooding affected 27 out of the 36 Nigerian states, inundating houses and streets. Transport was affected for at least two weeks, and food and fuel supplies blocked. More than 500 casualties were reported.

The city of Durban, in South Africa, is particularly Vulnerable to heavy rainfall; in the coastal area, in the first 13 days of April 2022, almost 200mm of cumulative rainfall were reached.

Event report 24-29 October 2021, over Sicily (South Italy).

A slow moving upper-level low brought devastating floods to parts of north west Germany and other parts of western Europe in July 2021.

This study evaluates the performance of multiple satellite precipitation products against ground-based data and the ERA5 reanalysis in Burkina Faso. The objective is to identify the satellite product best suited for national-scale hydrological modeling.