{"id":69479,"date":"2026-03-17T21:13:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T21:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=69479"},"modified":"2026-03-17T21:13:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T21:13:17","slug":"intense-cyclone-causes-massive-dust-advection-over-mediterranean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/69479","title":{"rendered":"Intense Cyclone Causes Massive Dust Advection Over Mediterranean"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just north of Libya on the afternoon of 17 March 2026, a large cyclone can be seen forcing a significant amount of dust from the Sahara to the Mediterranean. This true-color view from EUMETSAT’s Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) depicts this situation beautifully. Since MTG-FCI has three visible channels, it is able to produce true color products with fewer assumptions than the GOES-R series of satellites has to rely upon in order to produce similar-looking imagery. This image is from 1230 UTC and is provided courtesy of EUMETSAT’s Eumetview<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Of particular interest is the large dust band that has been pulled from Libya and Egypt into the air over the sea. The Dust RGB<\/a> can be used to denote where dust is prevalent. The following image is for the same time. Areas in magenta are associated with dust, and it’s obvious how widespread the dust is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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An interesting question is: what kind of storm is this, exactly? A medicane (a portmanteau of “Mediterranean” and “Hurricane”) is a certain type of cyclone that exhibits some characteristics of a tropical storm, including a warm core and an eye, that separates it from a more traditional mid-latitude cyclone. These are able to use the relatively warm waters of the Mediterranean to develop like a traditional tropical system would, but generally at a much lower intensity. It is March, of course, so the sea surface temperatures are still cool. The 15-16 C temperatures are on the low end of what has been observed with medicanes, but is still possible as much of the dynamical driving is done by upper-level cold air. The ASCAT Winds show a maximum wind speed approaching 40 knots, though it is not clear if the center of the storm is truly calm or if there’s just an observational gap there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Looking at the animation, there is definitely an eye-like structure at the center of the storm, which is not seen in a standard midlatitude cyclone due to the low-level convergence of those systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 700 hPa temperature field from the ECMWF model<\/a> from 1200 UTC on the 17th also seems to indicate a hint of a warm core to the system, as can be seen in the bottom center of the graphic below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Together, these factors have caused some European meteorological centers to officially label this a Medicane. Depending on which agency you listen to, it’s either called Samuel (France, Andorra) or Jolina (Italy). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just north of Libya on the afternoon of 17 March 2026, a large cyclone can be seen forcing a significant amount of dust from the Sahara to the Mediterranean. This true-color view from EUMETSAT’s Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) depicts this situation beautifully. Since MTG-FCI has three visible channels, it is able […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":69480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,23,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-quality","category-general-interpretation","category-meteosat","category-satellite-winds"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69479"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69488,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69479\/revisions\/69488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}