MOSIR Project

Polar Lows in Northern Norway - monitoring and forecasting -

Speaker	Magnus Ovhed, Helge Tangen (Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Tromso)
Date	2002/05/17 - 2002/05/17
Seminar	The Universal Seminar

Place	Hokkaido Univ.

Abstract	In the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea we get development of small and intense instability lows in the winter season. These polar lows are dangerous for small fishing vessels and also for land based activities on the coast of Norway. We will give a short historic view on how forecasters have been struggling to detect polar lows. Also we will describe how Norwegian Meteorological Institute today does monitoring and forecasting of polar lows. A recent case will be described (May 4th 2002); where a cold air outbreak from north after passing Bear Island developed a polar low off the coast of Northern Norway.
Keywords	Norwegian Sea, Bjornoya, Bear Island, Arctic, polar lows, meteorological disturbance