The 26 September 2006 mesoscale storm over the western Mediterranean Sea: satellite observations and numerical simulations

On 26 September 2006, a strong mesoscale storm, with some resemblance to a polar low, hit south-eastern Italy. Intense precipitation was detected by AMSU satellite observations at 02 UTC 26 Sept. This event is investigated from a numerical point of view. We aim at: • demonstrating the ability of the high-resolution PV advection model MIMOSA to characterize stratospheric intrusions at very fine scale, and reaching well below the 350K isentropic level. • assessing the ability of ARPEGE to produce realistic precipitation fields for intense and localized precipitating events with the improved description of the stratospheric intrusion given by MIMOSA.