Medicane Jolina captured by Sentinel-1

Everyone knows what a hurricane is, but a lesser-known storm type – a medicane – recently made landfall in Libya. While the arrival of Medicane Jolina, a rare Mediterranean cyclone, brought extreme weather, it also provided scientists with a crucial test case. Using different types of data from Earth-observing satellites, researchers are gaining new insights into how these storms form and evolve, and therefore, how their impacts can be predicted more accurately.

Key to classifying the storm as a medicane were images and data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, among others. This radar image from 18 March 2026, for example, was used to help identify the formation of a nearly-closed ring of wind near the sea surface and the windless eye-like feature in the centre of Medicane Jolina.

Read full story: Getting to the core of a medicane