Multisensor Analysis of Mediterranean Convective Case Studies Using EarthCARE and Meteosat Rapid Scan Observations

Convection plays a key role in the Earth’s energy balance and is responsible for severe weather phenomena such as hailstorms, which cause significant damage to infrastructure and agriculture. This study investigates convective events over the Mediterranean Basin between September 2024 and September 2025 using a synergistic combination of active and passive satellite observations from geostationary (GEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO) platforms. Convective evolution is analyzed using EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Support to Nowcasting and Very Short Range Forecasting products derived from Meteosat Rapid Scan Service imagery and the Multi-sensor Approach for Satellite Hail Advection (MASHA), which combines passive microwave hail probability retrievals from the Global Precipitation Measurement constellation with high-temporal-resolution Meteosat infrared observations to monitor hail-producing storms in near real time. The analysis is further enhanced with EarthCARE Cloud Profiling Radar reflectivity and Doppler velocity measurements, whose spatial variability provides a proxy for identifying convective cores and storm intensity. For selected events, observations from the Meteosat Third Generation Lightning Imager are also examined, highlighting the close relationship between intense lightning activity and strong convective updrafts. The results demonstrate the potential of combining complementary satellite observations to improve the detection and characterization of severe convection and hail-producing storms and identify the key roadblocks and pathways towards the effective integration of LEO and GEO observations.