The effect of cyclones crossing the Mediterranean region on sea level anomalies on the Mediterranean Sea coast

Lionello, Piero; Conte, Dario; Reale, Marco

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-1541-2019

Articles | Volume 19, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-1541-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-1541-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 7

Research article

|

31 Jul 2019

Research article |

| 31 Jul 2019

The effect of cyclones crossing the Mediterranean region on sea level anomalies on the Mediterranean Sea coast

Piero Lionello, Dario Conte, and Marco Reale

Data sets

A Community Effort to Intercompare Extratropical Cyclone Detection and Tracking Algorithms U. Neu, M. G. Akperov, N. Bellenbaum, R. Benestad, R. Blender, R. Caballero, A. Cocozza, H. F. Dacre, Y. Feng, K. Fraedrich, J. Grieger, S. Gulev, J. Hanley, T. Hewson, M. Inatsu, K. Keay, S. F. Kew, I. Kindem, G. C. Leckebusch, M. L. R. Liberato, P. Lionello, I. I. Mokhov, J. G. Pinto, C. C. Raible, M. Reale, I. Rudeva, M. Schuster, I. Simmonds, M. Sinclair, M. Sprenger, N. D. Tilinina, I. F. Trigo, S. Ulbrich, U. Ulbrich, X. L. Wang, and H. Wernli https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00154.1

Short summary

Large positive and negative sea level anomalies on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea are produced by cyclones moving along the Mediterranean storm track, which are mostly generated in the western Mediterranean. The wind around the cyclone center is the main cause of sea level anomalies when a shallow water fetch is present. The inverse barometer effect produces a positive anomaly near the cyclone pressure minimum and a negative anomaly at the opposite side of the Mediterranean Sea.