Workshop on the Antarctic wind field

The Antarctic is the windiest continent on Earth, with many of the coastal research stations affected by strong katabatic winds. The strength and persistence of the near-surface winds was noted by many of the early explorers (Fig. 1), and this feature has been perhaps the most intensively studied climatological element since then. In recent years there have been many advances in our understanding of the wind field both through the availability of data from automatic weather stations (AWSs) in remote locations and in improvements in numerical models. For the last four years the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) has been assessing our knowledge of the Antarctic wind field and trying to improve the representation of the winds in climate and numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. This meeting consisted of invited and submitted papers on many aspects of the Antarctic wind field. During the final morning there was a panel discussion that summarized our current understanding and considered the gaps in our knowledge.