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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
During winter and springtime, the flow above Antarctica at high altitude(upper troposphere and stratosphere) is dominated by thepresence of a vortex centered above the continent.It lasts typically from August to November.This vortex is characterized by a strong cyclonic jet centered above the polar high.In a recent study of our group (Hagelin et al. 2008) of four different sites in the Antarctic internalplateau (South Pole, Dome C, Dome A and Dome F), it was made the hypothesis that the wind speed strengthin the upper atmosphere should be related to the distance of the site to the center ofthe Antarctic polar vortex.This high altitude wind is very important from an astronomical point of view since it might trigger theonset of the optical turbulence and strongly affect other optical turbulence parameters.What we are interested in here is to localize the position of the minimum value of the wind speed at high altitudein order to confirm the hypothesis of Hagelin et al. (2008).