Abstract
The synoptic environment of the Eastern Mediterranean explosive cyclogenesis (ECG) of 22 January 2004, is described from a Sutcliffe-type viewpoint. ECG lasted 30 h. It began as warm-frontal cyclogenesis, forced by the advection of a cold and cyclonically rotating upper air mass, above an unstable marine boundary layer. The cold air mass was cut off its polar reservoir 2 days before ECG, followed a route above the Iberian Peninsula and the Sahara desert and approached the Libyan Sea from the southwest. When the bomb entered the Eastern Mediterranean, an arctic-type front penetrated from the north and turned the former into an intense frontal cyclone.
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Or, from a large-scale view point, the 500 hPa thermal pattern resembles the cyclonically wrapping baroclinic wave of Thorncroft and Hoskins (1990, see their Fig. 7a, b). The difference here is that, at 22 12, the structure is not that much cyclonically wrapped, as in the above authors’ Fig. 7b, consistent with the locally kata-front character of the present cold front. In contrast, the Saharan trough evolution during 19 00–21 18 resembles the anticyclonic shear jet side paradigm of the same authors (see their Fig. 7d–f). The contrasting evolving patterns of the present real atmosphere cases, are indeed associated with opposite signs of the mean jet horizontal shear.
References
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Brikas, D., Karacostas, T., Pytharoulis, I. (2013). Synoptic Aspects of the Eastern Mediterranean Explosive Cyclogenesis of 22 January 2004. In: Helmis, C., Nastos, P. (eds) Advances in Meteorology, Climatology and Atmospheric Physics. Springer Atmospheric Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29172-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29172-2_6
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