The sessions > Water cycle and extrem events: critical issues in the Mediterrean basin

The countries around the Mediterranean basin face water problems, including water shortages and floods, that can impact food availability, cause epidemics, and threaten life and infrastructures. These problems are due to a combination of inadequate planning and management policies and of poor capability to predict hydrometeorological and climatic hazards.

The Mediterranean region is characterized by hot, long and dry summers and mild winters during which rainfalls occur. The medium to high mountains that surround the Mediterranean Sea play a crucial role in steering air flow and the Mediterranean Sea acts as a moisture and heat reservoir, so that weather system can evolve to high-impact weather systems such as heavy precipitation and floods during fall, cyclogenesis and wind storms during winter or heat waves and droughts during summer.

The understanding and ability to forecast such high-impact phenomena is still low because of the contribution of fine scale processes as well as not well known interactions between oceanic, atmospheric, and hydrological processes. The aim of this session is to give an overview of the major progress achieved in the frame of the MISTRALS program.