Spatial analysis of hail and its suppression methods (case study: East-Azerbaijan province, Iran)

Atmospheric hazards are considered as the main environmental hazards, which threaten plants, animals and human communities. Hailing is one of these hazards which cause a lot of damages to different activities, especially agriculture, transportation, economy and so on in the world. East Azerbaijan is one of the main areas of these activities in Iran. In this paper to study the time and place of occurring of hail in East Azerbaijan province, the data are collected from 10 synoptic stations in a span of 10 year-time (2001-2010). For presenting the diagrams Excel software and for zoning GIS software were used. The results of this study show that the most proportion of hailing is related to Marand St. with 10 times falling, and the least one is related to Jolfa St. with only one time falling of hail. This issue is clearly observable in zoning map of the province. Time survey for hailing showed that the most rate of hail falling is occurring in April which is 23 times and the least one is related to September which is only one time. In the circular diagram for seasonal falling it is considered that the most rate of hailing is in the spring which is 49 times and the least one is in the summer which is 8 times. In the rest of this study the principles and fundamentals of decreasing hail is discussed and methods of decreasing damages and hail suppression is studied.