Mediterranean cyclones: their link to upstream North Atlantic cyclones and their PV dynamics ...

• Main Author: Scherrmann, Alexander
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: ETH Zurich 2024
• Subjects: infoeu-repo/classification/ddc/550; Earth sciences; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000663021; http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/663021

Mediterranean cyclones are extratropical cyclones, typically of smaller size and weaker intensity than cyclones that develop over the main open ocean storm tracks. Nonetheless, Mediterranean cyclones can attain high intensities, even comparable to the ones of tropical cyclones, and thus cause large socio-economic impacts in the densely populated coasts of the region. Typically, the chain of events leading to Mediterranean cyclogenesis involves a cyclone over the North Atlantic that provokes the breaking of a Rossby wave (RWB) and thereby the intrusion of a trough into the Mediterranean, which triggers cyclone formation. However, this causal sequence rarely occurs in a spatially consistent, fully repetitive pattern, and thus cyclones form in distinct regions of the Mediterranean. Thus, what eventually determines the location of the intrusion of the trough, and with it the seasonally distinct regions of cyclogenesis, and how the atmospheric state upstream over the North Atlantic plays a role to this still are ...