Getting to the core of a medicane

Medicane Jolina, a rare Mediterranean cyclone, recently made landfall in Libya after developing from a cold-core system named Samuel. The storm brought extreme weather, including destructive winds and severe flooding, to parts of Italy and Libya. Scientists from Italy's National Research Council (CNR-ISAC), funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), used the event to validate a new standardized definition of medicanes. Data from Sentinel-1, Meteosat Third Generation (MTG), and other missions allowed researchers to track the storm's transition to a warm-core system in near-real time, offering a blueprint for improved early warning systems in a region housing 500 million people.