Study on hail suppression benefit assessment on tobacco based on radar extrapolation

As one of the main tobacco cultivation areas, the Southwest China has diverse terrain and frequent hailstorms, which seriously affect tobacco production, procurement, and the farmer’s income. Hail suppression is an effective way to prevent and control hailstorms, but most of its benefit assessment is based on the comparison between inside and outside the region, which lacks objective and quantitative assessment. Therefore, this study constructs a hail yield loss model for tobacco, taking the hailstorm process on July 1, 2023 as an example, and based on radar observation and extrapolated data to invert the hail-related factors with/without hail suppression, and carried out a detailed assessment of the economic benefits of hail suppression. The results show that, by comparing four regression models, an optimal relationship model was constructed between tobacco yield loss rate and hail maximum diameter, duration, and density. It was found that the log-linear regression model can effectively simulate tobacco crop damage caused by hail. Radar can reflect the regional 1km resolution of hail factors and tobacco hail damage. And the yield loss areas and radar reflection of hail with a larger diameter and longer duration of the area is consistent. Using radar observations and extrapolation data, it was found that the hail suppression effect of in different areas was varied. Nearly half of the hail suppression areas have a yield reduction effect reached more than 30%. For each yuan invested in hail suppression operations during this hail process was able to bring about a tobacco loss reduction of 9.59 yuan. This study can provide a scientific basis for research on methods such as quantitative evaluation of the economic benefits of hail suppression to hail disaster bodies and the quantitative assessment of the benefits of financial meteorological services.