Energy exchanges for Mediterranean weather systems

An analysis of the kinetic energy budget is made for a cyclonic development over the Mediterranean. Horizontal flux convergence constitutes a major en ergy source. Generation of kinetic energy via cross-contour flow is a persi stent sink except only a weak energy source for the decay period of our cas e study. Dissipation of kinetic energy, computed as a residual, has local m axima both in the lower troposphere and near the jet stream level. By inves tigating the relative importance of divergent and nondivergent components i n the kinetic energy budget we found that when calculating the magnitude of the kinetic energy one may safely replace the total wind with the nondiver gent one. But the horizontal flux convergence of kinetic energy and the gen eration of kinetic energy are sensitive to the magnitude of the divergent w ind. A large increase in the kinetic energy of the total flow fields and the non divergent component of the flows occurs over the southeastern Mediterranean with the existence of the subtropical jet. This indicates that the subtrop ical jet steadily receives energy from divergent flow. Maximum energy conve rsion and transport occur near the rime of maximum storm intensity while sm aller values are observed during the development and decay stages.