Snow from trough over eastern Mediterranean Sea

7 January 2015 09:30 UTC

Photo credit: Koraysa

Region

Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia

Satellites

Meteosat-10, Metop-B, Suomi-NPP

Instruments

SEVIRI, AVHRR, VIIRS

Channels/Products

Airmass RGB, Dust RGB, Natural Colours RGB, HRV, RGB VIS0.6-VIS0.8-IR11.0,VIIRS INCOL

The Airmass RGB shows the deep upper level trough over the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Last Updated

21 September 2022

Published on

07 January 2015

The upper level trough created a frontal cloud system which brought a lot of snow to Turkey (Figure 1) and heavy snow showers to Crete, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel and Syria (Figure 2, Natural Colour RGB). A pre-frontal dust outbreak can also be seen over Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia (Figure 2, Dust RGB).

Figure 1: Meteosat-10 Airmass RGB of the Eastern Mediterranean

compare1 — Figure 2: Meteosat-10 Natural Colour RGB & Dust RGB, 7 January 09:30 UTC

compare2 — Figure 2: Meteosat-10 Natural Colour RGB & Dust RGB, 7 January 09:30 UTC

8 January

The following images show the situation over Turkey the day after the heavy snowfalls, caused by the cyclone, crossed the area on 7 January. As usual when cold Russian air moves across warm water, cloud streets form over the Black Sea. These cloud streets are better seen in the HRV image (channel 12 of SEVIRI, Figure 3) which has a three times better resolution than the Natural Colour RGB image (Figure 3) that uses the solar channels NIR1.6, VIS0.8 and VIS0.6 (channels 3, 2 and 1 of SEVIRI).

In the Suomi-NPP INCOL image taken at 10:38 UTC the cloud streets are clearly visible and it also shows a low concentration of sea ice for the season in the Sea of Asov.