Abstract
Abstract. We present a study on the characteristics of the sea breeze flow at a coastal site located in the centre of the Mediterranean basin at the southern tip of Italy. This study is finalized to add new data on breeze circulations over a narrow peninsula and present a unique experimental coastal site at about 600 m from the coastline in a flat open area at the foot of a mountain chain located in a region of complex orography. We study the seasonal behaviour of the sea-land breeze circulation by analysing two years of hourly data of wind speed and direction, temperature, radiation and relative humidity from a surface meteorological station, eighteen-months data from a wind profiler, and two-year data from the ECMWF analysis. Results show that breezes dominate the local circulation and play a major role for the local climate. They are modulated by the season, through the sea-land temperature difference and the large-scale flow. The large-scale forcing acts in phase with the diurnal breeze and opposes the nocturnal breeze. In summer, the daytime difference between the land surface temperature and the SST (Sea Surface Temperature) reaches its maximum, while the nigh-time difference has its minimum. This causes a strong, frequent and intense diurnal breeze and a weak nocturnal breeze. In winter and fall the nocturnal difference between the sea and land surface temperature reaches a maximum value, while the diurnal difference is at its minimum value. This causes a strong, frequent and intense nocturnal breeze despite of the large-scale forcing that is usually opposed to local-scale flow.
Highlights
Modeling the adjustment of the onshore flow inland from the coastal discontinuity in meso-scale models is still a challenge being limited by the resolution of the model grid and by the availability of comprehensive databases
While previous studies over Calabria were based on modelling the breezes, this paper focuses on experimental data collected at the Joint CRATI/ISAC-CNR site of Lamezia Terme, at the centre of the Tyrrhenian coast (Fig. 1) and at the end of the only west-east valley connecting the Tyrrhenian and Ionian seas
The breeze circulation does not develop and the local circulation is dominated by the large-scale wind
Summary
Local wind patterns can develop because of the differential heating between the ground surface and the free atmosphere at the same elevation some distance away. The limited width of the peninsula, allows two situations (i) the upslope – down-slope breeze and the sea-land breeze merge (ii) the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian Sea breeze can converge at the centre of the peninsula creating cloud formation and very local precipitations (De Leo et al, 2008). There is another important factor that favours the breeze development in Calabria: the Mediterranean climate.
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