Winter mesoscale cyclones (MCs) are frequently formed over the northern AsianMarginal Seas. They are often associated with precipitation and severe windscausing ice drift and serious disturbance in fishery and transport operation at thesea. Mesocyclones are difficult to forecast because of their rapid evolution andmovement. Climatological occurrence of mesoscale vortices in various areas isstill poorly understood. They were investigated mainly in the Northern AtlanticOcean, as well as in Gulf of Alaska and the Japan Sea in the Pacific Ocean.Favorable conditions for their development are also in the Bering and OkhotskSeas and to the east of Kamchatka where MCs are frequently observed on satelliteimages. However, conventional network is here sparse and the publishedinformation on MCs is too limited. Thus the main sources of quantitative spatialdata to examine these systems are satellite observations and fields of geophysicalparameters retrieved from measurements conducted by various satellite sensors.The MCs were detected by screening Envisat ASAR archive images acquired overthe Northwest Pacific in 2002-2006. High-resolution ASAR images of selectedMCs were compared with satellite visible and infrared imagery, QuikSCAT-derivedwind fields, surface analysis and upper-air analysis as well as with Aqua AMSR-E-derived fields of total atmospheric water vapor content V, total cloud liquidwater content Q and wind speed W.
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