Mesoscale Forecasts of Stratospheric Mountain Waves in the Arctic

A forecasting system was set up to infer the impact of mountain waves for producing mesoscale temperature anomalies in stratospheric heights. It was successfully applied during a recent internationel campaign SOLVE and EuroSOLVE which operated out of Kiruna in northern Sweden 1 Dec. 1999 and 15 Mar. 2000. The forecast information led to the successful detection of mountain induced polar stratospheric clouds on 26 Jan. 2000. For this event mesoscale forecasts, hindcast runs including grid nesting and comparisons with lidar observations and radiosonde measurements are presented.