A numerical simulation of the Catalina Eddy
- Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA (United States)
- National Meteorological Center, Washington, DC (United States)
A shallow cyclonic eddy termed the Catalina Eddy has occasionally been observed during summer in the bight of southern California. The Catalina Eddy occurs within {approximately}100 km from the coastal mountains with a depth typically extending up to the marine inversion level of several hundred meters above sea level and a diameter on the order of 100--200 km. The Catalina Eddy is produced by the interaction between the synoptic-scale northerly flow and the formidable topography along the southern California coast. A favorable synoptic situation that enhances the increased low-level climatological northerly flow along the central California coastline is the presence of the prominent east-west pressure gradient between the subtropical East Pacific high and the inland thermal low over California. Increased northerlies impinging on the San Rafael mountains north of Santa Barbara result in enhanced mesoscale lee troughing in the bight and establishment of a narrow ridge alongshore, leading to establishment of cyclonic vorticity in the bight. This paper describes numerical simulations and predictions of a Catalina Eddy event with a high-resolution multi-level limited area model. The model is initialized and forced at the lateral boundaries by the National Meteorological Center`s (NMC) 2.5{degree} {times} 2.5{degree} global objective analysis and also by NMC`s medium range forecast model (MRF) 1--10 day forecasts. In the authors previous effort to simulate mesoscale disturbances such as the Catalina Eddy the integrations were performed up to 1 model-day utilizing the NMC analysis as fixed lateral boundary conditions. In this paper they describe the results of continuous 5- to 7-day simulations of the Catalina Eddy event of 26--30 June 1988 by utilizing time-dependent lateral boundary conditions obtained from NMC`s global objective analysis as well as NMC`s MRF forecasts.
- Research Organization:
- Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC03-90ER61010
- OSTI ID:
- 10194723
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9112175-2; ON: DE94003030; BR: KP0500000; TRN: AHC29315%%2
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: International conference on mesoscale meteorology and TAMEX,Taipei (Taiwan, Province of China),3-6 Dec 1991; Other Information: PBD: [1991]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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