A winter monsoon front over the South China Sea studied by multi-sensor satellite data, weather radar data, and a numerical model

An atmospheric frontal system over the South China Sea (SCS) arising from the replenishment of the northeast monsoon is investigated by using multi-sensor satellite data, weather radar data, and a numerical model. The replenishment or freshening of the northeast monsoon results from the merging of two high pressure areas over the Chinese Continent. The near-sea surface wind field associated with this event was measured by the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) onboard the European MetOp satellite and the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) onboard the European Envisat satellite. The high resolution ASAR image reveals that the frontal line separating this wind field from the synoptic-scale ambient wind field is as sharp as in the case of a cold air outbreak and contains embedded rain cells. Furthermore, it shows that this replenishment was associated with northeasterly winds with speeds of up to 13 ms^-1 over the SCS at offshore distances larger than 60 km, but only with speeds of around 6 ms^-1 near the coast. The comparison of the observational data with model results of the pre-operational version of the AIR (Atmospheric Integrated Rapid-cycle) forecast model of the Hong Kong Observatory shows that the AIR model can successfully simulate the time evolution of the frontal system and the wind field over the open ocean, but fails to simulate the wind field near the coast.