Medicane Daniel: an extraordinary cyclone with devastating impacts
Medicane Daniel : un cyclone extraordinaire aux effets dévastateurs
Hewson, Tim ; Ashoor, Abdelwanees ; Boussetta, Souhail ; Emanuel, Kerry ; Lagouvardos, Kostas ; Lavers, David ; Magnusson, Linus ; Pillosu, Fatima ; Zsoter, Ervin
In early September 2023, a set of extreme rainstorms led to devastating flooding in parts of Greece, Bulgaria and Türkiye. These events related to development of a surface cyclone nearby on the night of 4 September, assigned the name 'Daniel' as part of a EUMETNET cyclone naming initiative (Cusack et al, 2017). In subsequent days, Daniel meandered slowly across the Mediterranean before adopting an east-south-eastward trajectory near northern Libya late on 8 September, whereupon it became a medicane. Landfall was near Benghazi around 23 UTC on 9 September. Remarkably, the medicane deepened further over land. The resulting intense rainfall over the Akh?ar (Green) mountains of northern Libya on the night of 10-11 September drained into the small Wadi Derna catchment and went on to cause catastrophic flooding in the city of Derna. Two dams burst, and there were 5,000-15,000 fatalities as buildings were swept away. This was likely the deadliest rainfall-related flooding disaster since ECMWF started producing operational forecasts in the late 1970s and the second most deadly dam-related disaster of all time. This article examines some of the meteorology and hydrology at play, whilst providing insights into predictability aspects, forecast quality and event rarity. In so doing we synthesise many aspects of ongoing work at ECMWF, and beyond.</p>
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