Advances in Geosciences www.adv-geosci.net 1680-7340 1680-7359 12 Mediterranean storms and extreme events in an era of climate change 2007 10.5194/adgeo-12-1-2007 http://www.adv-geosci.net/12/1/2007/ http://www.adv-geosci.net/12/1/2007/adgeo-12-1-2007.html http://www.adv-geosci.net/12/1/2007/adgeo-12-1-2007.pdf 1 4 2007-06-26 The rissaga of 15 June 2006 in Ciutadella (Menorca), a meteorological tsunami A. Jansa jansa@inm.es S. Monserrat D. Gomis Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia, Palma de Mallorca, Spain IMEDEA (University of the Balearic Islands – CSIC), Mallorca, Spain An extraordinary "rissaga" event (the local name for high-amplitude sea level oscillations) with 4–5 m of amplitude occurred on 15 June 2006 at Ciutadella (Menorca, Spain). In this paper we describe the rissaga event and propose that the meteorological mechanism responsible for it was an unusual pressure jump, associated with a convective squall line. Garcies, M. D., Gomis, D., and Monserrat, S.: Pressure-forced seiches of large amplitude in inlets of the Balearic Islands. Part II: Observational study, J. Geophys. Res., 101, 6453–6467, 1996. Gomis, D., Monserrat, S., and Tintoré, J.: Pressure-forced seiches of large amplitude in inlets of the Balearic Islands, J. Geophys. Res., 98, 14 437–14 445, 1993. Jansa, A.: Respuesta marina a perturbaciones mesometeorológicas: la rissaga de 21 de Junio de 1984 en Ciutadella (Menorca), Revista de Meteorología (AME), junio, 5–29, 1986 Jansa, A.: Servei experimenmtal de predicció de rissagues, in Les Rissagues de Ciutadella i altres oscillacions de nivell de la mar de gran amplitud a la Mediterránea (1987), 85–91, ed IME, 1990. Monserrat, S., Ramis, C., and Thorpe, A. J.: Large amplitude pressure oscillations in the Western Mediterranean, Geophys. Res. Lett., 18, 183–186, 1991a. Monserrat, S., Ibbetson, A., and Thorpe, A. J.: Atmospheric gravity waves and the "rissaga" phenomenon, Q. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 117, 553–570, 1991b. Monserrat, S., Vilibic, I., and Rabinovich, A. B.: Meteotsunamis: atmospherically induced destructive ocean waves in the tsunami frequency band, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 6, 1035–1051, 2006. Ramis, C. and Jansa, A.: Condiciones metreorológicas simultáneas a la aparición de oscilaciones del nivel del mar de amplitude extraordinaria en el Mediterráneo occidental, Revista de Geofísica, 39, 35–42, 1983. Tintoré, J., Gomis, D., Alonso, S., and Wang, D. P.: A theoretical study of large sea level oscillations in the western Mediterranean, J. Geophys. Res., 93, 10 797–10 803, 1988.