Observations and Scale Analysis of Coastal Wind Jets

  • Overland J
  • Bond N
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Abstract

Abstract Blocking of onshore flow by coastal mountains was observed south of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, by the NOAA P-3 aircraft on 1 December 1993. Winds increased from 10 m s−1 offshore to 15 m s−1 nearshore and became more parallel to shore in the blocked region, which had a vertical scale of 500 m and an offshore scale of 40–50 km. These length scale and velocity increases are comparable to theory. The flow was semigeostrophic with the coast being hydrodynamically steep; that is, the coast acts like a wall and the alongshore momentum balance is ageostrophic. This is shown by the nondimensional slope parameter—the Burger number, B = hmN/fLm—being greater than 1, where hm and Lm are the height and half-width of the mountain, N is the stability frequency, and f is the Coriolis parameter. The height scale is given by setting the local Froude number equal to 1—that is, hl = U/N ∼ 500 m, where U is the onshore component of velocity. This scale is appropriate when hl is less than the mountain height...

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APA

Overland, J. E., & Bond, N. A. (1995). Observations and Scale Analysis of Coastal Wind Jets. Monthly Weather Review, 123(10), 2934–2941. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0493(1995)123<2934:oasaoc>2.0.co;2

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