Investigating the Development Conditions for Cyclones with Tropical Features in the Mediterranean Basin.
- 1AEMET, Desarrollo y aplicaciones, Spain (jgcams@aemet.es)
- 2Universidad de Castilla la Mancha, Departamento de Ciencias Ambientales, Facultad de Ciencias Ambientales y Bioquímica, Toledo, Spain
- 3Climate Variability and Prediction Division (CLIVAP), Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC), Bologne, Italy
In recent years, the impact of cyclones with tropical characteristics in areas of the Mediterranean Sea, also called Medicanes (MEDIterranean hurriCANES; Emanuel, 2005), has caused extensive damage, particularly in coastal areas of Greece, Italy and North Africa. These cyclones have a relatively low frequency in Mediterranean areas, although they are associated with extreme weather phenomena (heavy rainfall, strong winds, and landslides). Therefore, the main goal of this work is to create an index of meteorological conditions that can determine favourable environment for the development of cyclones with tropical characteristics in the Mediterranean basin. For this purpose, we have selected some of the most intense Medicanes occurring during the last years. Using ERA5 data we study variables such as Convective available potential energy (CAPE), coupling index (CI; Bosart & Lackmann, 1995), Wind shear, Geopotential in 500 hPa and Sea surface temperature (SST).The findings of this study reveal that the development of cyclones with tropical characteristics in the Mediterranean is strongly linked to the formation of an intense trough, which is exposed to strong convective processes (high CAPE and CI values), low wind shear at high levels and a Mediterranean Sea temperature above 15ºC. The combination of all these conditions at the same time is quite uncommon, so this could explain the infrequent and extreme nature of this type of cyclones.
References
Emanuel, K. (2005). Genesis and maintenance of" Mediterranean hurricanes". Advances in Geosciences, 2, 217-220.
Bosart, L. F., & Lackmann, G. M. (1995). Postlandfall tropical cyclone reintensification in a weakly baroclinic environment: A case study of
Hurricane David (September 1979). Monthly Weather Review, 123(11), 3268–3291. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0493(1995)123<3268:
ptcria>2.0.co;2
How to cite: Gutiérrez-Fernández, J., Alvarez-Castro, C., Scoccimarro, E., Cavicchia, L., and Gualdi, S.: Investigating the Development Conditions for Cyclones with Tropical Features in the Mediterranean Basin. , EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-1055, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-1055, 2024.
