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Greece and the surrounding areas experienced an early warm spell with characteristics of a typical summer Mediterranean heatwave in mid-May 2020. The maximum 2 m temperature at Kalamata (southern Greece) reached 40 °C on 16 May and at Aydin (Turkey), it was 42.6 °C on 17 May. There was a 10-standard deviation positive temperature anomaly (relative to the 1975–2005 climatology) at 850 hPa, with a southwesterly flow and warm advection over Greece and western Turkey from 11 to 20 May. At 500 hPa, a ridge was located over the Eastern Mediterranean, resulting in subsidence. The aims of this study were (a) to investigate the prevailing synoptic conditions during this event in order to document its occurrence and (b) to assess whether this out-of-season heatwave was predictable on subseasonal timescales. The subseasonal predictability is not a well-researched scientific topic in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The ensemble global forecasts from six international meteorological centres (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts—ECMWF, United Kingdom Met Office—UKMO, China Meteorological Administration—CMA, Korea Meteorological Administration—KMA, National Centers for Environmental Prediction—NCEP and Hydrometeorological Centre of Russia—HMCR) and limited area forecasts using the Weather Research and Forecasting model with the Advanced Research dynamic solver (WRF) forced by Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv.2; NCEP) forecasts were evaluated for lead times ranging from two to six weeks using statistical scores. WRF was integrated using two telescoping nests covering Europe, the Mediterranean basin and large part of the Atlantic Ocean, with a grid spacing of 25 km, and Greece–western Turkey at 5 km. The results showed that there were some accurate forecasts initiated two weeks before the event's onset. There was no systematic benefit from the increase of the WRF model's resolution from 25 km to 5 km for forecasting the 850 hPa temperature, but regarding the prediction of maximum air temperature near the surface, the high resolution (5 km) nest of WRF produced a marginally better performance than the coarser resolution domain (25 km). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The highest rainfall totals (912.2 mm) and the largest number of raindays (133 days), since 1958, were recorded in Thessaloniki during the year of 2014. Extreme precipitation heights were also observed on a seasonal, monthly and daily basis. The examined year presented the highest daily rainfall intensity, the maximum daily precipitation and the largest number of heavy precipitation days (greater than 10 mm), and it also exceeded the previous amounts of precipitation of very wet (95th percentile) and extremely wet (99th percentile) days. According to the automatic circulation type classification scheme that was used, it was found that during this exceptionally wet year, the frequency of occurrence of cyclonic types at the near surface geopotential level increases, while the same types decreased at a higher atmospheric level (500 hPa). The prevailing type was type C which is located at the centre of the study area (Greece), but several other cyclonic types changed during this year not only their frequency but also their percentage of rainfall as well as their daily precipitation intensity. It should be highlighted that these findings differentiated on the seasonal-scale analysis. Moreover, out of the three teleconnection patterns that were examined (Scandinavian Pattern, Eastern Mediterranean Teleconnection Pattern and North Sea-Caspian Pattern), the Scandinavian one (SCAND) was detected during the most of the months of 2014 meaning that it was highly associated with intense precipitation over Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]