Abstract

MARTIN, P; SERIO, L; PESCIO, A  and  DRAGANI, W. Persistence of surface winds from eastern quadrant in coastal stations of Patagonia. Geoacta [online]. 2015, vol.40, n.2, pp.87-97. ISSN 1852-7744.

The exploitation and transport of oil are very important activities contributing to the economic development of modern industrial society. However, these activities expose the Patagonian coast at risk of suffering oil pollution. If any oil spill occurs at sea, the wind acts as a dispersing and advection agent, so knowing the characteristics of the spill drift under specific wind conditions allows take action to reduce their impact. The aim of this paper is to study the general behavior of winds in coastal towns of Patagonia region, and particularly, the situations of persistent winds with East component. Twenty-three years (1991-2013) of hourly wind direction and velocity data from 6 coastal locations were used. While the directions from the East tend to be less frequent in the region (less than 25%), they are the most important for this study. Because of this, the analysis of the persistence of wind direction, in order to determine the number of consecutive hours that they are blowing in the same direction, put special emphasis on winds with Easterly component. All locations have cases of at least 80 consecutive hours of wind coming from those directions. The longest case lasted 9 days. For more persistent cases of each weather station, the time of occurrence of the most intense wind was identified and the related synoptic situation was analyzed. We conclude that the studied region is subject to the possibility of occurrence of synoptic events where the wind can blow persistently onshore, with moderate to strong speeds, during periods which may exceed 5 days. These events are the most undesirable from coastal pollution and should be especially considered for designing contingency plans.

Keywords : Patagonia; Wind; Persistence; Pollution; Oil.

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