Program Tropicana - 4 weeks of June

Tropicana was launched on June 3rd with a press conference by MIT Professor emeritus Kerry Emanuel.This conference provided an overview of medicanes, polar lows, and subtropical storms, the main subjects of the 4-week program. Each week features practical sessions on medicanes detection, Mediterranean cyclones attribution, and tropical cyclone tracking with tempest extremes. The group meets every Friday for a wrap-up session to discuss the week’s progress and insights.

"I will review what is known, observationally and theoretically, about such storms, and show that in most cases they form under synoptic-scale conditions in which the potential intensity and relative humidity are locally elevated above normal climatology by deep, cold lows aloft that have usually formed by Rossby wave breaking events. In some cases, such as Cyclone Daniel of 2023, the parent cold low can interact with the surface-based cyclone long after the latter has formed. I will argue that the observed structural differences between these storms and normal tropical cyclones can be attributed to the higher magnitude of the Coriolis parameter and the lower dry static stability along moist adiabats at lower temperatures. They appear to be part of the continuum between moist and dry surface flux-driven cyclones described by Cronin and Chavas." E.K