Gravity wave excitation during the coastal transition of an extreme katabatic flow in Antarctica

The offshore extent of Antarctic katabatic winds exert a strong control on sea ice production and the formation of polynyas. In this study, we combine ground-based remotely-sensed and meteorological measurements at Dumont d’Urville (DDU) station, satellite images and simulations with the WRF model to analyze a major katabatic wind event in Adélie Land. Once developed over the slope of the ice sheet, the katabatic flow experiences an abrupt transition near the coastal edge. The transition consists in a sharp increase in the boundary layer depth, a sudden decrease in wind speed and a decrease in Froude number from 3.5 to 0.3. This so-called ‘katabatic jump’ visually manifests as a turbulent ‘wall’ of blowing snow in which updrafts exceed 5 m s −1 . The wall reaches heights of 1000 m and its horizontal extent along the coast is more than 400 km. By destabilizing the boundary-layer downstream, the jump favors the trapping of a gravity wave train  with an horizontal wavelength of 10.5 km. The trapped gravity waves exert a drag that significantly slows down the low-level outflow. Moreover, atmospheric rotors form below the first wave crests. The wind speed record measured at DDU in 2017 (58.5 m s −1 ) is due to the vertical advection of momentum by a rotor. A statistical analysis of observations at DDU reveals that katabatic jumps and low-level trapped gravity waves occur frequently over coastal Adélie Land. It emphasizes the important role of such phenomena in the coastal Antarctic dynamics.