Development of a front identification scheme for compiling a cold front climatology of the Mediterranean

Abstract

The objective of this work is the development of an automated and objective identification scheme of cold fronts in order to produce a comprehensive climatology of Mediterranean cold fronts. The scheme is a modified version of The University of Melbourne Frontal Tracking Scheme (FTS), to take into account the particular characteristics of the Mediterranean fronts. We refer to this new scheme as MedFTS. Sensitivity tests were performed with a number of cold fronts in the Mediterranean using different threshold values of wind-related criteria in order to identify the optimum scheme configuration. This configuration was then applied to a 10-year period, and its skill was assessed against synoptic surface charts using statistic metrics. It was found that the scheme performs well with the dynamic criteria employed and can be successfully applied to cold front identification in the Mediterranean.