The Development of Antarctic Katabatic Winds and Implications for the Coastal Ocean
Open Access
- 1 May 1997
- journal article
- Published by American Meteorological Society in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
- Vol. 54 (9) , 1248-1261
- https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1997)054<1248:tdoakw>2.0.co;2
Abstract
The influence of katabatic winds on the Antarctic coastal waters is examined by using simple models of the ocean and atmosphere. A katabatic flow model incorporating Coriolis dynamics is solved analytically and another with nonlinear friction is solved numerically to provide wind stress to a two-layer coastal ocean model. The resulting solutions are evidently the first to incorporate Coriolis terms with a thermodynamic equation that includes compressional warming effects. The emphasis in this paper is on delineating the parameters that control the relative adjustment of the katabatic wind into alongshore and offshore components. By including nonlinear friction, it is shown that steeper slopes and weaker stratification tend to direct the wind more toward the ocean. It is further demonstrated that the katabatic forcing supports the strong polar easterlies (winds from the east) along the periphery of the continent and that the offshore extent should be dependent on the atmospheric Rossby deformation... Abstract The influence of katabatic winds on the Antarctic coastal waters is examined by using simple models of the ocean and atmosphere. A katabatic flow model incorporating Coriolis dynamics is solved analytically and another with nonlinear friction is solved numerically to provide wind stress to a two-layer coastal ocean model. The resulting solutions are evidently the first to incorporate Coriolis terms with a thermodynamic equation that includes compressional warming effects. The emphasis in this paper is on delineating the parameters that control the relative adjustment of the katabatic wind into alongshore and offshore components. By including nonlinear friction, it is shown that steeper slopes and weaker stratification tend to direct the wind more toward the ocean. It is further demonstrated that the katabatic forcing supports the strong polar easterlies (winds from the east) along the periphery of the continent and that the offshore extent should be dependent on the atmospheric Rossby deformation...Keywords
This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: