Abstract
Abstract Afternoon/evening near-coastal convection over land is easily understood as a response to solar heating of the land, turbulent transfer of heat and moisture to the boundary layer, and lifting of air by vigorous sea-breeze fronts. Subtler processes apparently underlie the late night and morning convection that is prevalent over coastal waters throughout the Tropics. Sensitivity tests using the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University–NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5), and further diagnoses of the control run described in Part II, are used to explore these processes. Prior studies have speculated that “land-breeze” circulations, analogous but opposite to the sea breeze, drive offshore convection at night. However, nighttime radiative cooling of land and the associated thermal breezes are much weaker than the corresponding daytime processes, especially under humid tropical skies. Analysis of model mean soundings reveals that modest (fractions of a degree Celsius) temperature changes near the 800-hPa ...
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