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The Mediterranean region is a unique area characterized by a large spectrum of atmospheric phenomena, some of which have a high impact on many aspects of human activities, safety and wellbeing. The area is long considered as a hot spot of such atmospheric phenomena deserving multidisciplinary scientific attention. The scientific research that has been carried out on these high impact atmospheric processes that occur in the Mediterranean area is indeed widespread and the available international literature is very extensive. The paper touches initially the temperature and precipitation regimes, followed by a discussion of floods and droughts. The exciting cyclogenetic patterns of explosive cyclones and medicanes are presented in separate sections. The lightning activity and the presence of dust and other pollutants are also presented herein. The atmospheric chemistry of the region which is increasingly becoming of utmost importance for the area under study is distinctly discussed. Attempts to modify the weather (the precipitation, in particular) are outlined too. The effects of climatic change on various atmospheric processes are considered throughout this paper, in addition to a dedicated section on temperature and precipitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ensemble of meteorological simulations with the WRF model at convection-allowing resolution (2 km) is analysed in a multi-variable evaluation framework over Europe. Besides temperature and precipitation, utilized variables are relative humidity, boundary layer height, shortwave radiation, wind speed, convective and large-scale precipitation in view of explaining some of the biases. Furthermore, the forecast skill of evapotranspiration and irrigation water need is ultimately assessed. It is found that the modelled temperature exhibits a small but significant negative bias during the cold period in the snow-covered northeast regions. Total precipitation exhibits positive bias during all seasons but autumn, peaking in the spring months. The varying physics configurations resulted in significant differences for the simulated minimum temperature, summer rainfall, relative humidity, solar radiation and planetary boundary layer height. The interaction of the temperature and moisture profiles with the different microphysics schemes, results in excess convective precipitation using MYJ/WSM6 compared to YSU/Thompson. With respect to evapotranspiration and irrigation need, the errors using the MYJ configuration were in opposite directions and eventually cancel out, producing overall smaller biases. WRF was able to dynamically downscale global forecast data into finer resolutions in space and time for hydro-meteorological applications such as the irrigation management. Its skill was sensitive to the geographical location and physical configuration, driven by the variable relative importance of evapotranspiration and rainfall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]