## 4 Discussion and Conclusions  
In the present study, the sensitivity of the WRF model to microphysical schemes and IBCs in simulating the mature phase of Medicare Iancos (16-19 September 2020), one of the most powerful and destructive Mediterranean TLCs occured in recent years, was examined. Four different microphysical parameterizations of varying complexity and two global model datasets as IBCs were used for this purpose. The simulation results were compared against spaceborne precipitation radar observations and scatterometer sea surface winds. In particular, the GPM-CO DPR overpass at 10:31 p.m. UTC on 17 September captured the medicine during its TLC phase for the first time ever, right when Iancos was approaching the Ionian Greek islands, causing devastation and casualties. In the study, the GPM-CO overpass was used to compare the simulated precipitation microphysics during the medicane mature phase with the DPR precipitation measurements, as well as to assess the simulations' ability to reproduce the observed precipitation pattern, intensity, and 3D structure. The simulations with the WRF-ARW model were set to start at 12:00 p.m. UTC 17 September 2020 and were integrated until 12:00 a.m. UTC 18 September 2020, while TLC Iancos reached its maximum surface intensity of \(\sim\)995 hPa about 3 h later (i.e., 3:00 a.m. UTC 18 September 2020) during its landfall over Western Greece. All simulations suffered from too much intensification of the surface pressure; however, those with ECMWF IBCs triggered more intense TLCs than those with GFS. It is important to note that WRF sensitivity to IBCs was caused by several factors that were not possible to separate with the dataset available. GFS and ECMWF models, indeed, have different physical schemes and dynamical cores, use different horizontal and vertical resolutions, have different assimilation schemes, and assimilate different observations. In terms of the trajectories, no substantial differences were found among them. However, the variability of the minimum surface pressures among the different microphysics experiments was notable compared to that of their trajectories, which is a characteristic evidenced in previous studies of tropical cyclones [33]. The analyses of the cyclone phase space diagrams confirmed that all of the experiments were able to develop a deep warm core, and most of them also developed an axisymmetric structure, although this feature was present only at the start of the GFS-based simulations, and at the middle or end points in the majority of ECMWF-based experiments. However, we used the usual threshold of B = 10 m as a cutoff, whereas other studies [28] set it at a less stringent 15 m. We used [PERSON]'s original parameters, originally proposed for tropical cyclones and adapted in previous studies [7; 59] to Mediterranean's midlatitude characteristics (lower tropopause than in the tropics) with more restrictive (lower) pressure level layers. It is worth noting that there were no observations to validate these results with higher precision. The comparison between the radar reflectivity field as estimated by the simulations and as measured by the GPM-CO DPR revealed the better performance of the experiments with ECMWF data over those with GFS data. In fact, the former were able to accurately characterize the positions of the eyewall and/or the main rainband and outer bands at the low and middle levels, whereas the latter were not so successful in creating a well-defined eye, and they tended to place the main rainband too far in the northwest direction. However, both sets of simulations manifestly overestimated both the intensity of the reflectivity factor at mid-levels and the vertical extension of the clouds. These features were further supported through a more complete statistical analysis of the CFADs of the 3D reflectivity fields.