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Cyclone Daniel over Libya
Medicane Daniel is the world’s deadliest weather event of 2023 and it is one of the most destructive and deadly tropical cyclone systems with similar characteristics in recent years, including outside the basins normally subject to these extremely severe events. There are thousands of victims between southeastern Europe and North Africa, most of which occurred only in Libya due to dams overflowing due to heavy and abundant rains; The number of missing people is still high. During the 21st century, Daniel has overtaken Cyclone Freddy (1,434 deaths, February 2023) and Cyclone Idai (1,590 deaths, March 2019), both of which occurred in the Indian Ocean, bringing death and destruction to Mozambique, Madagascar, and Malawi Zimbabwe and Cyclone Maria (Caribbean, September 2017). Daniel’s most catastrophic event was Typhoon Yolanda in 2013 (Philippines, 6,300 dead). However, the data is still preliminary.
The storm took on subtropical characteristics over the warm Ionian Sea and flew towards Libya, where it landed on September 10. Typically, these hurricanes weaken before they reach the coast; the still strong landfall effect is significantly rarer. There is also the assumption that Daniel took on completely tropical characteristics shortly before it made landfall, i.e. a classic warm-core cyclone. Its slow inland movement caused catastrophic flooding due to the extreme rainfall that occurred particularly near the coastal mountains, with a total rainfall of 400 mm, that is, a year’s worth of rainfall in a short period of time. Most of the rain fell in a small area on the coast where it typically doesn’t rain much.
Daniel is the final part of forming a block in Omega and what it entailed Simultaneous extreme weather events in Europe, such as the unusual heat in Central and Northern Europe, the floods in Spain, the historic rainfall in Greece (884 mm in Portaria) with impacts also on Turkey and Bulgaria and finally on Libya and Egypt. The Omega Block, a high-pressure area with two low-pressure areas on its sides, is a common baric figure in Europe, but due to the slowness with which it moves, it can set the stage for particularly severe extreme weather events. Meanwhile, due to human influence, the ridges of these structures can become much warmer than normal Cyclonic circulations can be less cold but wetter.
In fact, an atmosphere warmer than +1°C can contain 7% more water vapor. Human influence is changing the statistics of extreme events and favoring the occurrence of very rare or exceptional phenomena, even at the current level of global warming. In addition, the Mediterranean is a “sentinel” of ongoing climate change. One in four rainfalls worldwide are precisely due to climate change. The future behavior of medics is unclear, their frequency could decrease in a warmer climate while it would increase the probability of seeing the strongest.