A new database for Intense Mediterranean Cyclones

To better assess the future risks associated with Intense Mediterranean Cyclones (IMC) a better understanding of their features, variability, frequency and intensity is required, including a robust detection method. The application of different detection algorithms provides results that are remarkably similar in some aspects but may be very different in others even using the same data. Thus, the selection of a particular method can significantly affect the results. For these reasons it is necessary to use different approaches and datasets to study the sensitivity and robustness of the detection approach. Those approaches often use minima in sea-level pressure (SLP) or extrema in relative vorticity or both to first identify the eye of the cyclone. SLP reflects the atmospheric mass distribution, and is representative of synoptic-scale atmospheric processes. On the other hand, the relative vorticity displays higher variability and is representative of the atmospheric circulation, being able to detect several local extrema (more than one centre), it can reduce uncertainties in the cyclone detection and tracking.

Therefore, within the framework of the EFIMERA project and to detect and track IMC we use a combination of different methods based on previous studies found in the literature. This new list of detected IMC events, together with the observed and well documented ones, are used here to create a new IMC database to be used for the study of their impacts and risk associated.