Structure And Temporal Variation Of Storm Track Over The North Pacific In 6 Recent Years

Storm track is a band-region where baroclinic cyclones are dominant whose periods are less than one week. Usually, in a storm track region over oceans, geopotential height variance, eddy kinetic energy and meridional heat transport are maximal. There are two obvious regions of midlatitude storm tracks over the Pacific and Atlantic in the Northern Hemisphere. Storm track is associated with tracks of cyclones and anticyclones in daily synoptic chart, thus it may impact weather change and short-term climate variation. Furthermore, according to the storm track variation, people may design more reasonable oceanic navigation route. Therefore, study of storm track is of great importance.In this paper, the high-resolution QuikSCAT (QuikBird Satellite Microwave Scatterometer Sea Winds Data) Sea Winds data, NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) 10m-height Gaussian grid data and pressure level reanalysis data are used to analyze the characteristics of storm track in upper- and lower- troposphere over the North Pacific as well as its temporal variation. Some previous results on storm track are confirmed, and some new discoveries about storm track over the North Pacific such as double-storm track are also found.The intensity of storm track over the North Pacific is the maximum in winter and the minimum in summer. Its location is in lower-latitude in winter and in higher-latitude in summer. Meanwhile, the maximum of meridional heat transportV'T' exist around 850 hPa, and several centers of eddy kinetic energy are found in500 hPa. Double-storm track, named as subtropical and subpolar storm tracks, is found over the North Pacific based upon the analysis of high-resolution QuikSCAT Sea Winds data. Double-storm track is divided around 45°N. The 6 most recent winters cyclones and anticyclones tracks over the North Pacific are summarized to...