HYMEX: A 10-year multidisciplinary program on the mediterranean water cycle

The countries around the Mediterranean basin face water problems, including water shortages and floods, that can impact food availability, cause epidemics, and threaten life and infrastructures. These problems are due to a combination of inadequate planning and management policies and of poor capability to predict hydrometeorological and climatic hazards. The Mediterranean Sea acts as a moisture and heat source for the atmosphere through air sea fluxes, so that energetic mesoscale features are present in the atmospheric circulation, which can evolve to high-impact weather systems, such as heavy precipitation and flash flooding. Floods also occur at times on the southern side of the Mediterranean Sea, as in October 2008 over the northeastern region of Morocco, in November 1968 in Tunisia, and in Algiers, Algeria, on November 10, 2001, causing 886 victims.