The impact of resolution on the representation of southeast Greenland barrier winds and katabatic flows

• Published in: Geophysical Research Letters
• Main Authors: Moore, G. W. K., Renfrew, Ian A., Harden, Benjamin E., Mernild, Sebastian H.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: John Wiley & Sons 2015
• Subjects: Mesoscale meteorology; Greenland; Flow distortion; Barrier winds; Katabatic flow; Air-sea-ice interaction; Arctic; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/7336

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 42 (2015): 3011–3018, doi:10.1002/2015GL063550. Southern Greenland is characterized by a number of low-level high wind speed weather systems that are the result of topographic flow distortion. These systems include barrier winds and katabatic flow that occur along its southeast coast. Global atmospheric reanalyses have proven to be important tools in furthering our understanding of these orographic winds and their role in the climate system. However, there is evidence that the mesoscale characteristics of these systems may be missed in these global products. Here we show that the Arctic System Reanalysis, a higher-resolution regional reanalysis, is able to capture mesoscale features of barrier winds and katabatic flow that are missed or underrepresented in ERA-I, a leading modern global reanalysis. This suggests that our understanding of the impact of these wind systems on the coupled-climate system can be enhanced through the use of higher-resolution regional reanalyses or model data. 2015-10-19