Orographically-forced cold fronts — Mean structure and motion

Shallow cold fronts with a north-west/south-east orientation sometimes experience blocking by the coastal mountain range of south-eastern Australia and greatly increase their propagation speed on the eastern (seaward) side of the range while they advance more slowly to the west of the range. The violent behaviour of some cold-frontal passages, or southerly busters, is found to be at least orographically initiated, but the phenomenon does not exhibit the characteristics of a coastally-trapped density current. The head of the front has the character of an evolving density current and its propagation is well predicted by density current theory over more than half of its lifetime. Nevertheless, it differs from steady laboratory-simulated examples in that a horizontal roll-vortex just behind the front is found to be accelerating relative to the rate of advection of cold air behind the front. This implies that its evolution will be governed by warm air entrainment, a fact which is confirmed by the observations. General agreement between extensive airborne observations over the ocean and measurements made at selected points along the coast indicates the usefulness of these basic studies for future improvement to forecasting in the near-coastal region.