Climatology ofCyclones and TheirTracking over Southern Coasts ofCaspian Sea

Abstract

The southern coasts of Caspian Sea is subjected to synoptic/mesoscale weather systemsranging from locally enhanced sea breeze formation and small local front systems to synoptic scale cyclones.This study presents climatology of cyclones over the southern coasts of Caspian Sea covering a ten year period1996-2005. Altogether 57 cyclones were formed during the ten year period. Anoticeable seasonality is observedin evolution of cyclones over the entire Caspian region, a majority of the 57 cyclones (73.7%) were developedduring winter and fall seasons while the remaining (26.3%) occurred during spring and summer seasons.Most ofthe cyclones were of low intensity, out of 57 cyclones observed during the ten year period 16 (28%) were deepdepressions and 24 (42.1%) were cyclonic storms. Altogether 5 super cyclonic storms were observed during theperiod, out of which 4 were observed during winter and fall seasons. Mid-tropospheric, large-scale processes andlocal features were responsible for the initial development of all weather systems. The Mediterranean Sea playsa significant role in cyclogenesis and propagation of the systems the Caspian region. Further, a Mediterraneancyclonic system formed during October 2001 was studied in detail using backward trajectory Lagrangian model:Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT). The HYSPLIT model outputs confirmedthe observed synoptic features for the weather system of the case study.