Bibcode
Mahoney, T.; Muñoz-Tuñon, C.; Varela, A. M.
Bibliographical reference
New Astronomy Reviews, Volume 42, Issue 6-8, p. 417-424.
Advertised on:
11
1998
Journal
Citations
7
Refereed citations
6
Description
We present monthly statistics for a two-year meteorological site-testing
campaign at the two candidate sites for the location of the GTC. The
windroses presented here are a fairly complete representation of the
wind regimes prevailing at the lower site and indicate that at night the
predominant wind direction for the site is from the NE, whereas during
the daytime the wind-vector pattern shows a substantial north-westerly
anabatic component. Apart from the expected small differences between
the sites due to their difference in altitude (110 m), the only
significant difference, in terms of local meteorology, is a greater
wind-direction dispersion at the higher site due to its more complicated
orographical profile. Statistically, any differences between the sites
arising from instabilities in the height of the inversion layer are
counterbalanced by occasional irruptions of warm, humid air from the
caldera. Hence neither site is particularly privileged over the other
with respect to cloud cover, and the ``caldera effect'' does not seem to
play a significant role over the course of a year.