File: {Elsevier}Lionello/Pageproofs/3d/N52170-Lionello-Ch006.3d Creator: / Date/Time: 5.11.2005/6:04pm Page: 313/358 ARTICLE IN PRESS 1 2 Chapter 6 3 4 5 Cyclones in the Mediterranean Region: 6 7 Climatology and Effects on 8 the Environment 9 10 1 2 3 2 4 5 11 P. Lionello, J. Bhend, A. Buzzi, P.M. Della-Marta, S.O. Krichak, A. Jansa` , 6 7 8,9 9 12 P. Maheras, A. Sanna, I.F. Trigo, and R. Trigo 13 1 14 University of Lecce, Italy (
[email protected]) 2 15 University of Bern, Switzerland (
[email protected],
[email protected]) 3ISAC-CNR, Italy (
[email protected]) 16 4Tel Aviv University, Israel (
[email protected]) 17 5INM Spain (
[email protected]) 18 6University of Thessalonoki, Greece (
[email protected])PROOF 19 7ARPA, Piemonte, Italy (
[email protected]) 20 8Instituto de Meteorologia, Centro de Geofı´sica da, Universidade de Lisboa, 21 Portugal (
[email protected]) 9 22 CGUL at University of Lisbon and Universidade Luso´fona Portugal (rmtrigo@ 23 fc.ul.pt) 24 25 26 27 28 29 6.1. Introduction 30 31 Cyclones represent the most important manifestation of the mid-latitude high- 32 frequencyUNCORRECTED variability, and play a fundamental role in the atmospheric large-scale 33 horizontal (and vertical) mixing and in modulating the air–sea interaction. 34 Cyclonic circulations, due to their frequency, duration and intensity, play an 35 important role in the weather and climate over the entire Mediterranean region 36 (Radinovic, 1987).