JP1.14
Barrier flow and tip jets: A QuikSCAT climatology of high wind speed events near Greenland
G. W. K. Moore, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; and I. A. Renfrew
The high topography of Greenland results in a number of interesting orographically induced high speed wind flows along its coast. In this paper, we use the surface wind field dataset from the NASA/JPL's SeaWinds scatterometer aboard the QuikSCAT satellite to develop a climatology of three of these orographically induced flows: barrier flow along Greenland’s southeast coast, tip jets and reverse tip jets near Cape Farewell. The very high spatial resolution of the QuikSCAT winds allows for a much more detailed view of the surface wind flow around Greenland than is possible with other datasets. The three phenomena of interest in this paper stand out as the most distinctive features of the wind field around Greenland. We show that the peak wind speeds associated with these phenomena can exceed 50 m/s with each of the flows having a very distinctive directionality that is related to the underlying interaction of a parent cyclone with the topography.
Joint Poster Session 1, Formal Poster Viewing - Polar Coastal Processes (Joint with Sixth Conference on Coastal Atmospheric and Oceanic Prediction and Processes and the 8th Conf on Polar Meteorology and Oceanography)
Monday, 10 January 2005, 2:30 PM-4:00 PM
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