Mesoscale Cyclones over Antarctica and the Southern Ocean

In the high southern latitudes small scale cyclones, known as mesoscale cyclones, with a horizontal scale of up to 2000km in diameter and a short lifetime of between 3 hours and 3 days are observed to occur frequently. These small scale storms vary in their intensity from a light breeze to hurricane strength winds. They are associated with heavy precipitation and can cause severe damage at research stations on the Antarctic continent and can disrupt shipping and aircraft operations in the Southern Ocean region. The study of Southern Ocean cyclones is of great importance to the safety and efficiency of operations in the Antarctic due to their intense wind speeds, however, due to the limited amounts of data in the polar regions, especially the south polar region, much is still unknown about the climatology of these important small scale features of the climate system. This study is designed to further the understanding of these systems through the use of mesoscale cyclone climatologies produced with AVHRR satellite data and the Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS) data.