Tropical cyclones over the Mediterranean Sea in climate change simulations

Gaertner, Miguel Ángel; Jacob, Daniela; Gil, Victoria; Domínguez, Marta; Padorno, Elena; Sánchez, Enrique; Castro, Manuel de

doi:10.1029/2007gl029977

Cited by 71 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Because they are generally associated with strong winds and heavy precipitation and because their occurrence may increase under future climate change conditions (Gaertner et al, 2007), an improved knowledge of the conditions in which they develop is essential. It could lead to an improvement of their forecast and thus mitigate their potentially highly destructive effects in densely populated regions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediterranean hurricanes: large-scale environment and convective and precipitating areas from satellite microwave observations

Claud

Alhammoud

Funatsu

et al. 2010

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Subsynoptic scale vortices that have been likened to tropical cyclones or polar lows (medicanes) are occasionally observed over the Mediterranean Sea. Generated over the sea, they are usually associated with strong winds and heavy precipitation and thus can be highly destructive in islands and costal areas. Only an accurate forecasting of such systems could mitigate these effects. However, at the moment, the predictability of these systems remains limited.Due to the scarcity of conventional observations, use is made of NOAA/MetOp satellite observations, for which advantage can be taken of the time coverage differences between the platforms that carry it, to give a very complete temporal description of the disturbances. A combination of AMSU-B (Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B)/MHS (Microwave Humidity Sounder) observations permit to investigate precipitation associated with these systems while coincident AMSU-A (Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A) observations give insights into the larger synoptic-scale environment in which they occur.Three different cases (in terms of intensity, location, trajectory, duration, and periods of the year -May, September and December, respectively) were investigated. Throughout these time periods, AMSU-A observations show that the persisting deep outflow of cold air over the sea together with an upper-level trough upstream constituted a favourable environment for the development of medicanes. AMSU-B/MHS based diagnostics show that convection and precipitation areas are large in the early stage of the low, but significantly reduced afterwards. Convection is maximum just after the upper-level trough, located upstream of cold midtropospheric air, reached its maximum intensity and acquired a cyclonic orientation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediterranean hurricanes: large-scale environment and convective and precipitating areas from satellite microwave observations

Claud

Alhammoud

Funatsu

et al. 2010

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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“…It has been suggested that the increased sea surface temperature in an anthropogenically warmed climate could lead to favorable conditions for the formation of hurricanes in the Mediterranean Sea (Gaertner et al 2007). After the advent of satellite meteorology in the last decades of the twentieth century, on the other hand, evidence emerged (Ernst and Matson 1983;Rasmussen and Zick 1987) indicating that a few mesoscale vortices showing a striking resemblance to tropical latitude hurricanes occasionally do occur over the Mediterranean Sea.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediterranean Tropical-Like Cyclones in Present and Future Climate

2014

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The Mediterranean has been identified as one of the most responsive regions to climate change. It has been conjectured that one of the effects of a warmer climate could be to make the Mediterranean Sea prone to the formation of hurricanes. Already in the present climate regime, however, a few of the numerous low pressure systems that form in the area develop a dynamical evolution similar to the one of tropical cyclones. Even if their spatial extent is generally smaller and the life cycle shorter compared to tropical cyclones, such storms produce severe damage on the highly populated coastal areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. This study, based on the analysis of individual realistically simulated storms in homogeneous long-term and high-resolution data from multiple climate change scenarios, shows that the projected effect of climate change on Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones is decreased frequency and a tendency toward a moderate increase of intensity.

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“…In this context, the future variations of medicane characteristics due to climate change are a matter of concern. RCMs have been used to downscale global climate model (GCM) scenarios (Gaertner et al 2007;Cavicchia et al 2014;Walsh et al 2014). Romero and Emanuel (2013) applied a statistical-deterministic method for increasing the medicane sample size.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation of medicanes over the Mediterranean Sea in a regional climate model ensemble: impact of ocean–atmosphere coupling and increased resolution

et al. 2016

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International audienceMedicanes are cyclones over the Mediterranean Sea having a tropical-like structure but a rather small size, that can produce significant damage due to the combination of intense winds and heavy precipitation. Future climate projections, performed generally with individual atmospheric climate models, indicate that the intensity of the medicanes could increase under climate change conditions. The availability of large ensembles of high resolution and ocean–atmosphere coupled regional climate model (RCM) simulations, performed in MedCORDEX and EURO-CORDEX projects, represents an opportunity to improve the assessment of the impact of climate change on medicanes. As a first step towards such an improved assessment, we analyze the ability of the RCMs used in these projects to reproduce the observed characteristics of medicanes, and the impact of increased resolution and air-sea coupling on their simulation. In these storms, air-sea interaction plays a fundamental role in their formation and intensification, a different mechanism from that of extra-tropical cyclones, where the baroclinic instability mechanism prevails. An observational database, based on satellite images combined with high resolution simulations (Miglietta et al. in Geophys Res Lett 40:2400–2405, 2013), is used as a reference for evaluating the simulations. In general, the simulated medicanes do not coincide on a case-by-case basis with the observed medicanes. However, observed medicanes with a high intensity and relatively long duration of tropical characteristics are better replicated in simulations. The observed spatial distribution of medicanes is generally well simulated, while the monthly distribution reveals the difficulty of simulating the medicanes that first appear in September after the summer minimum in occurrence. Increasing the horizontal resolution has a systematic and generally positive impact on the frequency of simulated medicanes, while the general underestimation of their intensity is not corrected in most cases. The capacity of a few models to better simulate the medicane intensity suggests that the model formulation is more important than reducing the grid spacing alone. A negative intensity feedback is frequently the result of air-sea interaction for tropical cyclones in other basins. The introduction of air-sea coupling in the present simulations has an overall limited impact on medicane frequency and intensity, but it produces an interesting seasonal shift of the simulated medicanes from autumn to winter. This fact, together with the analysis of two contrasting particular cases, indicates that the negative feedback could be limited or even absent in certain situations. We suggest that the effects of air-sea interaction on medicanes may depend on the oceanic mixed layer depth, thus increasing the applicability of ocean–atmosphere coupled RCMs for climate change analysis of this kind of cyclones

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Tropical cyclones over the Mediterranean Sea in climate change simulations

Cited by 71 publications

References 21 publications

Mediterranean hurricanes: large-scale environment and convective and precipitating areas from satellite microwave observations

Mediterranean hurricanes: large-scale environment and convective and precipitating areas from satellite microwave observations

Mediterranean Tropical-Like Cyclones in Present and Future Climate

Simulation of medicanes over the Mediterranean Sea in a regional climate model ensemble: impact of ocean–atmosphere coupling and increased resolution

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