Mediterranean Tropical-Like Cyclones forecasts/analysis using the ECMWF Ensemble Forecasting System.

What is it about?

The study focuses on Mediterranean Tropical-Like Cyclones known as "medicanes" and examines their structure and predictability using the new version European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) Integrated Forecast System (IFS) ensemble forecasting system. The analysis utilizes ensemble simulations with perturbed parameters to assess the impact of large-scale atmospheric forcing and diabatic heating on medicanes. The study specifically investigates three strong medicanes: Ianos, Zorbas, and Trixie. The results show that the forecasts accurately reproduce the tropical-like features of these cyclones compared to operational analysis and satellite rainfall data. The study also highlights the role of precursor events and the interaction between upper-level dynamically driven Potential Vorticity (PV) streamers and surface heating in the development of medicanes. The research suggests that understanding these processes is crucial for predicting and analyzing medicanes.

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Why is it important?

Medicanes are among the strongest convective events happening on the Earth system. Understanding their evolution in an era of climate change and their simulation with the new global model ensemble prediction system IFS, is one of the main points of climate simulation in the current situation.

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