Medicanes are tropical–like cyclones that occur over the Mediterranean Sea, mostly during late August and early September; although their structure and behaviour resemble the features of a hurricane, Medicanes are weaker in intensity, affect less area, have shorter lifetime and they are triggered by the strong temperature gradient of a cold pool in the higher atmosphere rather than the instability created by high sea surface temperatures.
Resolves YES if a National European Meteorological Office declares a Medicane to have formed during September. Storm Daniel is currently tracking over Greece and will enter the Mediterranean soon - it has a (decent) chance to become a Medicane.
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I am unsure on how to resolve this market. My 68mph comment probably lead some people to buy NO. But on the other hand the (likely) YES resolution once the HNMS releases its annual bulletin next year will take time. I am going to close trading now, though, before more people buy into the confusion.
@sarius Right now I am leaning on the side of resolving this YES (anticipating the HNMS declaring this a medicane which seems most in line with the resolution criteria) and refunding the NO people/traders their losses. Takes on this @RobertCousineau @bashmaester and @d6e (and I think @NicoDelon)?
@sarius what changed between your comment saying "@RobertCousineau as per the title this doesn't resolve until the end of September. But I agree, Daniel did not meet the wind speed criteria for medicane status. " seven days ago, and today?
@RobertCousineau In short: it was a rushed market with bad criteria made worse by my commenting (which wasn't clear to me at the time). I'll gladly make everyone who lost mana whole.
@sarius In long: The fact that there are no official wind speed criteria for medicane status - which I thought there were, which is why I said "So far leaning on the side of YES just from the most recent (yesterday) satellite/wind data (likely over 68mph which is the Medicane threshold)." I took it that people thought wind speeds were my resolution criteria - which is what I thought they would be - and traded based off that.
Since my actual resolution criterion is "resolves YES if a National European Meteorological Office declares a Medicane to have formed during September" I closed the market to stop more people from trading on conflicting criteria. And even my RC is pretty ambiguous in retrospect, i.e. the September time-frame was for the formation not the declaration. So I would've just had the same problem at the end of September instead of right now. Closing it early was kind of an instinctive reaction - and very possibly the wrong call.
@sarius I'd suggest simply N/A'ing the market then. No one loses anything, and we all learn a new way resolution criteria are hard/get better at making resolution criteria.
@sarius Cheers for the market resolution. Had been a great opportunity to dive into medicanes. Hope we have more opportunities to explore unique cyclone markets in the future.
@sarius I have dug around some more, and it would seem that medicanes have no agency-level official definition in the European context.
The closest to an official source that I could find is from World Meteorological Organisation, which in one of its press releases referred to Daniel as a medicane. In addition, MedCyclones, which is a European network for Mediterranean cyclones in weather and climate that is supported by 29 European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) countries. These people are working on an official definition for medicanes and intergovernmental actions surrounding the topic. They published a brief report on Daniel which, with qualifications, indirectly referred to Daniel as a medicane, but emphasized the need for further meteorological analyses.
Outside of national weather offices, traditional and respected media outlets like Reuters and BBC also referred to Daniel as a medicane.
I therefore sold my NO shares and bought some YES shares in light of what I found above. The final call lies with @sarius, naturally.
@SarkanyVar he said below the threshold is 68mph. https://manifold.markets/sarius/will-a-medicane-form-in-the-mediter#ThXQhqq7OWEfquYiIOKm
@RobertCousineau Well, wind speed criterion is not the only criterion in the consideration, especially in light of the lack of official definition in the European context. Besides, if wind speed is the sole determinant for market resolution, this market would probably have been resolved much earlier.
To be honest, given the ambiguity in terminology and even wind speed thresholds according to various standards (The German weather office proposed a wind speed cut-off for 70mph, while the Greek weather office, the one that gave Daniel its name, merely required a clearly visible cyclonic eye and continuous cloud cover).
In any case, I doubt many weather offices would opt to use the terminology in a formal context, before an official definition on a pan-European level is established (which is what the MedCyclones task force is trying to achieve). I think the WMO press release would be something that is closest to a 'declaration' by an official agency at this stage.
Anyway, I am mainly posting what I found to invite discussions and my bet just reflects my interest and changing beliefs, I don't mind if this market gets resolved to NO later anyway.
For additional context, the German Weather Service (DWD) seems to be of the opinion that Daniel is just 'almost' a medicane, not a full medicane per se.
https://www.dwd.de/DE/wetter/thema_des_tages/2023/9/14.htmlDies ist ein Sturm über dem Mittelmeer mit tropischen Eigenschaften, bei dem die auftretenden Windgeschwindigkeiten zwischen 64 und 111 km/h liegen. Hätte sich Daniel noch weiter verstärkt, würde man von einem Medicane sprechen.
"This is a storm over the Mediterranean Sea with tropical characteristics, with wind speeds ranging from 40 to 70 mph (64 to 111 km/h). If Daniel had strengthened himself further, one would speak of a Medicane."
For clarity, I have also skimmed over the Greek, Italian and Libyan weather services two weeks ago and also just now. Note that I don't have command in the respective languages (Duolingo doesn't count) and so machine translation was heavily relied on.
In short, I did not see the particular terminology of 'medicane' on their websites, although most of them do not seem to have specific convention for such a categorization to begin with. For example, the Italian Meteorological Service has a brief bulletin for tropical cyclones and explanation for storm naming. On the page, the phenomenon of medicane is explained in several points, and Daniel is listed as one of the most intense storms of the year (tempeste più intense), though technically not a direct reference per se.
The Libyan one was peculiar as their website was quite barebone, and I have found that they provide relatively basic weather updates mostly through their Facebook page. But I was not able to locate a specific reference such as اعصار متوسطي (Mediterranean hurricane) and ميدكين ('Medicane').
@SarkanyVar Yeah - medicanes are tricky and I rushed this market to creation. The resolution criteria are awful. I was just using the DWD criteria I had seen on twitter, thinking it was the official standard. The fact that there isn't one did not really occur to at the time. This is a pretty huge oversight imo and needs fixing badly!
Going by the resolution criteria a National European Meteorological Office would have the final word - so far I haven't seen any 'declare' this a medicane (which is a more colloquial term in the first place). The HNMS will release its annual bulletin eventually, in which they will probably declare Daniel to have been a Medicane (for whatever reason they call every tropical-like cyclone with a cloud cover and an eye a Medicane...).
But the HNMS in classifying TLC wind-speeds does differentiate between 4 different categories (roughly Trop Dep, Trop Storm, Cat I, Cat II+). Following this classification scheme it would upgrade from Tropical Storm to Medicane at 68+mph.
@sarius In any case my apologies for inadvertently causing a fuss 😅.
I was trying to comment what I found, as I randomly thought of this market again and did some further reading. Was very interesting to know that some codification work was underway. Medicanes would probably become even stronger if not more frequent in the future with a warming Mediterranean Sea (more heat content but also increased anticyclonic conditions), so it's quite relevant and important to take note of them, with the basin being so populous and flood-prone.
@SarkanyVar Truth-seeking > profit-seeking tbh. So no worries! I hope that Daniel was a proper wake-up call towards a better warning system and a dedicated agency for the Med. Warmer SSTs will make tropical cyclogenesis more likely, so I would expect storms to on average become stronger as well. As we have seen, though, a 'weak' storm can still bring catastrophic impacts.
@SarkanyVar The Germans seem to be all over these kinds of storms. Some interesting stuff on this Account. They hold that Daniel became fully tropical with 51+mph winds, which is also my impression and which in turn will (very very likely) make the Greeks (with their wack criteria) declare this storm a medicane. The NHC would have had this as a moderate-strong tropical storm.
@RobertCousineau as per the title this doesn't resolve until the end of September. But I agree, Daniel did not meet the wind speed criteria for medicane status.
But I digress, the effect of the storm is truly terrifying, Medicane or not.
Daniel has landed in Libya and lashed the area around Benghazi with high winds and rain. I have been snooping over a couple weather services in Europe and haven't found a reference to Daniel as a Medicane yet. There are amateur designations, and folks at Wikipedia even included Daniel as an example of Medicane.
However, there are also reports that the sustained wind speed of Daniel only went up to 45-50 knots, and so while the Arab Regional Weather Center appeared to have acknowledged a tropical / subtropical transition, the wind speed seems to fall somewhat short of a true Medicane. But I suppose the final resolution lies with the European Weather Offices as the description noted.
I will leave it to sarius for the decision and further digging.
But in any case, at least we have some really cool satellite photos of a sandstorm eyewall:
https://twitter.com/YouStormorg/status/1700936968887058827
So far leaning on the side of YES just from the most recent (yesterday) satellite/wind data (likely over 68mph which is the Medicane threshold). Very impressive looking system with surprisingly strong outflow for the Med - Omega block things, I guess. That I am sure the NHC would have named it.
Don't have the time right now, though, to dig through what all the European Weather Offices believe. Will do so later and keep the question open until either the end of September or until Daniel is confirmed to have been a Medicane.
GFS Phase diagram, showing a transition to a warm core (a kinda close call).
And from below there is some nice concentricity going on
https://cyclonicwx.com/floater/medstorm/ir/
