ooerrr... what have I started (:

Aren't Polar Lows MISOcyclones?

Les
:-),er... no... this is where I think the term meso- may cause confusion,with miso and meso cyclone
refering to circulations in severe local storms eg Supercells.I think Polar lows should be called
mesoSCALE cyclones.
An early paper that tried to clarify the 'scale' problem,tho I think this lead to some controversy
at the time
Orlanski, I., 1975: A rational subdivision of scales for atmospheric processes. Bulletin of the
American Meteorological Society, 56(5), 527-530.
Abstract / PDF
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~gth/netscape/1975/io7501.pdf
at
http://www.gfdl.gov/~gth/netscape/authors/orlanski.html
From my potted reading there appears to have been some confusion re the classification of mesoscale
cyclones,polar lows,secondary lows,comma cloud lows etc as dynamicists in the late 80s and early
90s tried to reconcile what was coming from new computer simulations with satellite imagery and
observations.The legacy of this seems to be some ongoing lack of clarity in the terminology,even if
everybody knows what they are talking about now,

--
regards,
david