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.