AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Editors' Highlight

Tropical cyclones over the Mediterranean Sea in climate change simulations

In the past few years, two very unusual tropical cyclones developed over the Atlantic Ocean. The first was 2004 Hurricane Catarina, which made landfall over the southern coast of Brazil. The second was 2005 Hurricane Vince, which formed next to the Madeira Islands in the Atlantic Ocean as the first detected hurricane to develop over this area and the first known tropical cyclone to make landfall in Spain. Noting that anthropogenic climate change might be responsible for altering the geographical areas where tropical cyclones develop, Gaertner et al. (2007) used an ensemble of regional climate models to assess new locations of tropical cyclone occurrence. They found an increase in extremes of cyclone intensity over the Mediterranean Sea in climate change scenario simulations. This increase, at least for the most sensitive model, was clearly related to tropical cyclone formation, revealing for the first time a risk of tropical cyclone development over the Mediterranean Sea under future climate change conditions. Though the uncertainties are large, further application of the method used in the study could yield more specific assessments of this risk.

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