Cloudburst, weather bomb or water bomb? A review of terminology for extreme rain events and the media-effect

For the past four years, we have been tracking the British, French and Italian press for the genesis and establishment of a new weather term: the 'water bomb'. The term has, today, become established in Italy to qualify a cloudburst that is newsworthy. That is, it bursts over a populated area within the newspaper catchment to cause localized damage. The term became well-established during the stormy and damaging summer of 2014 in Italy, being used 54 times across 64 Italian newspapers analyzed between 13 July and 16 August 2014. The establishment of the term is interesting, and shows how terminology can be introduced by the media down, without regard for existing terms that are already appropriate, such as cloudburst. It can also cause confusion due to conflict with similar terms, such as ‘weather bomb’, which are used for entirely different phenomena.

HARRIS Andrew;  LANFRANCO Massimo; 

2018-02-09

WILEY-BLACKWELL

JRC100856

0043-1656,   

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.2923/abstract,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC100856,   

10.1002/wea.2923,