What causes katabatic winds?

Asked by: Leo Price

Katabatic winds often result from cool, denser air moving downhill towards warmer, less dense air. Because of this, they affect local climates, even reducing humidity in the air and blowing away snow.

What are katabatic winds and where do they occur?

Katabatic winds are most commonly found blowing out from the large and elevated ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. The buildup of high density cold air over the ice sheets and the elevation of the ice sheets brings into play enormous gravitational energy.

Where and what causes the peak of the katabatic winds?

Although the pressure-gradient forcing is at its maximum at the slope, surface friction causes the peak in the katabatic wind speeds to occur above the surface, usually by a few meters to a few tens of meters.

How does the Coriolis effect influence the katabatic winds?

The Coriolis force also affects the katabatic winds, tending to turn them to the left so that they merge with the coastal easterlies on the southern side of the circumpolar trough. The near-surface flow therefore appears as an anticyclonic vortex, with cold air outflow from the continent.

Where does anabatic wind occur?

anabatic wind, also called upslope wind, local air current that blows up a hill or mountain slope facing the Sun.

How air may accumulate over ground and form either katabatic or Anabatic wind?

Anabatic Winds are upslope winds driven by warmer surface temperatures on a mountain slope than the surrounding air column. Katabatic winds are downslope winds created when the mountain surface is colder than the surrounding air and creates a down slope wind.

Are katabatic winds dry?

Cold and usually dry katabatic winds, like the Bora, result from the downslope gravity flow of cold, dense air. Katabatic flows slumping down from uplands or mountains may be funneled and strengthened by the landscape and are then known as mountain gap wind such as the Santa Ana, mountain breeze or drainage wind.

How are Anabatic winds formed or created?

Anabatic winds are mainly created by ultraviolet solar radiation heating up the lower regions of an orographic area (i.e. valley walls). Due to its limited heat capacity, the surface heats the air immediately above it by conduction. As the air warms, its volume increases, and hence density and pressure decreases.

Why are katabatic winds associated with temperature inversions?

Warming during katabatic winds is usually due to adiabatic warming and increased mixing in the stable boundary layer so that warmer inversion-layer air is brought down to the surface.

Which winds are called snow eater?

According to the Weather Doctor, the winds can easily vaporize a foot of snow within hours. Because of this, chinook winds are often known as the “snow eaters.” An extreme example of a Chinook wind was recorded in South Dakota in January 1943, according to Black Hills Weather.

Which wind is known as Doctor?

the Harmattan

On its passage over the Sahara, the Harmattan picks up fine dust and sand particles (between 0.5 and 10 microns). It is also known as the “doctor wind”, because of its invigorating dryness compared with humid tropical air.

What is the desert wind called?

Sirocco. A sirocco is a hot desert wind that blows northward from the Sahara toward the Mediterranean coast of Europe. More broadly, it is used for any kind of hot, oppressive wind.

What is a chinook in weather terms?

What are Chinooks? Chinook winds – also known as Foehn winds in other parts of the world – are a type of warm, dry wind that occur on the downward slope of a mountain when warm air has lost its moisture. In Canada, the winds originate from the Pacific Coast.

What’s a derecho storm?

A derecho (pronounced similar to “deh-REY-cho”) is a widespread, long-lived wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms.

What is the hot wind called?

The Loo (Hindi: लू ) is a strong, dusty, gusty, hot and dry summer wind from the west which blows over the Indo-Gangetic Plain region of North India and Pakistan. It is especially strong in the months of May and June.

What is the fern effect?

What is the foehn effect? In simple terms, this is a change from wet and cold conditions one side of a mountain, to warmer and drier conditions on the other (leeward) side.

What is foehn and Chinook?

The wind off of the Rocky Mountains in North America is a foehn wind that is called a Chinook wind. The wind is a warm, dry wind that blows down the eastern slope of most mountains. A warm wind like this can bring relief from cold winter weather.

What is Chinook in geography?

Chinook winds, or simply ‘Chinooks’, are two types of prevailing warm, generally westerly winds in western North America: Coastal Chinooks and interior Chinooks. The coastal Chinooks are persistent seasonal, wet, southwesterly winds blowing in from the ocean.