Doom: Hotcoldwetdry Will Make Mediterranean “Hurricanes” Worse Or Something

Did you know that the Med has Bad Weather? And that you are making it worse?

The Mediterranean sea is capable of generating hurricanes and climate change will make them worse

In March 2026, a tropical-like cyclone named ‘Jolina’ produced significant damage across North Africa. In 2020 and 2023, storms Ianos and Daniel both caused severe damage in Greece, and the latter triggered a humanitarian disaster in the city of Derna, Libya, where thousands were declared dead or missing.

These tropical-like cyclones occur in a non-tropical region. They are known as “medicanes” – a portmanteau of Mediterranean and hurricanes.

As any major storm, medicanes know no borders. Their impacts spread across multiple countries as they sweep across the Mediterranean coast, one of the world’s most densely populated and vulnerable regions (the total population of Mediterranean countries in 2020 was about 540 million people, around one-third of them living in coastal areas).

Rising sea temperatures due to climate change increase the reservoir of energy these storms can feed on. More research on this phenomenon, which couples atmospheric and oceanic effects, is urgently needed in order to improve early warning systems and the preparedness of populations, in terms of civil protection and regarding how we would affront a catastrophic event that might exceed our ability to prepare for them.

They’re always looking for something to fearmonger about. Big storms are the norm in the Med, and have been since the great pulsewater around 12000 years ago when the seas rose high enough post glacial age to refill the Med. There are poems and stories about huge storms going back thousands of years. Around Greece, which has long been a shipping capital, you find huge numbers of shipwrecks under the water, most with the remains of ballast stones and amphora from the time, from as far back as the 6th Century BCE. Oh, and here’s one from 3,300 years ago. Harsh weather is a part of the Med, especially around Greece. Gale force storms can blow up in a minute and then just completely disappear.

But, you know, now it’s all your fault.

One of the earliest research papers on the subject, in 1983, opened with the sentence: “At times, Mother Nature does her best to deceive us”, accompanied by a satellite image of a cyclone displaying a well-organised spiral cloud structure and a cloudless eye at its centre, strikingly similar to those that habitually occur in the tropics. The opening line implies what a surprise it would be to encounter such an impressive and counterintuitive occurence of a tropical-like storm structure in the Mediterranean.

So, do we have any satellite data from before, say, 1979? Oh, right, we didn’t have the satellites to view them, so, we have nothing to compare to.

Ultimately, however, efficient adaptation requires better climate prediction models and therefore more reliable and accurate estimation of extremes caused by cyclones. This can be only achieved through scientific research. An end-to-end approach that translates research findings into actionable information for climate adaptation and civil protection is both timely and essential, including for example infrastructure resilience planning and early warning systems to reduce vulnerability and socioeconomic impacts.

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