ИСТИНА

Mesocyclones in high latitudes are important maritime atmospheric phenomena, they characterize by strong wind speeds and surface fluxes despite their small sizes (200 to 1000 km) and short lifetime (6 to 36 hours). These characteristics make their identification and tracking difficult in global reanalyses, consequently, they are still poorly documented and quantified, especially, in Southern Hemisphere. Number of studies demonstrate overview of mesocyclone activity over the Souther Hemisphere. These studies are based both on automated tracking algorithms (not validated) and on manual identification and tracking (mostly regional) and show inconsistent assessments. To clarify the Southern Hemisphere mesocyclone activity and to provide a reference dataser, that may be used to validate automated tracking schemes in SH we here present manually tracked mesocyclones over Southern Ocean for winter 2004. This database is used to assess the ability of four modern reanalyses to reproduce mesocyclones wind speed field structure in comparison with QuikSCAT scatterometer wind data.