Spectral characteristics of East Antarctica meteorological parameters during 1994

A data set recorded during 1994 from the Dome Charlie and D-80 automatic weather stations and the Dumont d'Urville meteorological station has been used to investigate the time variation and the spatial distribution of pressure, temperature, and wind velocity over East Antarctica. The advanced procedures of wavelet analysis, high-resolution spectral estimation, and their combination were used for this study. Special attention was devoted to the temperature behavior during winter. The surface temperature inside the continent shows strong oscillations with a period of similar to 10 days and a sharp increase ranging from 20 degree C to 40 degree C during the winter season. Cross-covariance functions between temperature and pressure at different sites were analyzed to estimate the correlation between warming events and their temporal and spatial distribution. The warming is more often associated with high-pressure anomalies and follows the variation of the pressure with a delay varying from some hours to 1 day. Sharp changes in wind speed and direction generally occur when the temperature increases. In such cases the wind has the tendency to blow from the W-NW sector, deflecting from the dominant katabatic flow direction.