Storm tracks in the Southern Hemisphere

Abstract

From 1979 to 1989, global (ECMWF) analyses of many meteorological variables important in baroclinic storms have been bandpass filtered to highlight fluctuations on 2- to 8-day time scales in order to illuminate the relationships among the variables in baroclinic storm-track regions. Because of the greater zonal symmetry in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) versus the Northern Hemisphere (NH), it is possible to examine these relationships over a zonal sector without being dominated by local effects associated with jet stream entrance and exit regions of the storm tracks. The question of the impact of the storm-track eddies on the mean flow is examined using zonal mean and a localized Eliassen-Palm flux. -from Author