Polar Low Special Issue II

Abstract

The mesoscale weather systems, known as polar lows, that form over the North Atlantic, the North Pacific Ocean and the adjacent Arctic sea are well-known to meteorologists and voyagers in these areas. Several papers on these violent and unexpected storms have appeared in the literature. Their detailed structure and dynamics, however, are still not well documented. A three-year research programme on Polar Lows was started in Norway in 1983 by The Norwegian Meteorological Institute, in order to increase our understanding of these phenomena and to establish operational forecasting of them. Several results from numerical forecasts of polar lows with limited area models are presented in this issue. In some of the experiments, the effect of slantwise convection on their simulation has been studied.