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Summary: 6.1 THE SANTA CRUZ EDDY: OBSERVATIONS AND NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS
Cristina L. Archer
and Mark Z. Jacobson
Stanford University, Stanford, California
1 INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION
A shallow, cyclonic circulation is found to occur in
the summer time in the Monterey Bay (California).
Since it is often centered offshore from the city of
Santa Cruz, it is named "Santa Cruz Eddy" in this
study. With its horizontal size of 10-20 km, the
Santa Cruz Eddy represents the only non-severe
weather example of a meso-¡
circulation in the at-
mosphere, i.e., with horizontal size of 2 to 20 km
and lifetime of the order of hours. It forms in the
late afternoon and it can either last a few hours or
continue over night until the sea breeze breaks it
down the morning after. The Santa Cruz Eddy is im-
portant for local weather because it causes surface
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