Arctic front
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The Arctic front is the semipermanent, semi-continuous weather front between the cold arctic air mass and the warmer air of the polar cell. It can also be defined as the southern boundary of the Arctic air mass.[1] Mesoscale cyclones known as polar lows can form along the arctic front in the wake of extratropical cyclones. Arctic air masses in their wake are shallow with a deep layer of stable air above the shallow cold cool.[2]
Arctic Fronts form in the Arctic region, and move southwards in southerly flows. When they reach Northern Europe, they have usually travelled over an open sea, and convective cloudiness has developed. The appearance of an Arctic Cold Fronts is then, essentially, that of a shallow Cold Front.
Arctic Cold Fronts are usually so far north that Meteosat images alone are inadequate to recognize them. Also, the following conceptual models may look like Arctic Cold Fronts: polar Cold Front, Polar Low and Comma. The final check is best made using a loop of AVHRR images with the help of numerical model parameter fields.
