[1] The sea breeze system (SBS) occurs at coastal locations throughout the world and consists of many spatially and temporally nested phenomena. Cool marine air propagates inland when a cross-shore mesoscale (2–2000 km) pressure gradient is created by daytime differential heating. The circulation is also characterized by rising currents at the sea breeze front and diffuse sinking currents well out to sea and is usually closed by seaward flow aloft. Coastal impacts include relief from oppressive hot weather, development of thunderstorms, and changes in air quality. This paper provides a review of SBS research extending back 2500 years but focuses primarily on recent discoveries. We address SBS forcing mechanisms, structure and related phenomena, life cycle, forecasting, and impacts on air quality.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2003RG000124

Sea breeze: Structure, forecasting, and impacts

Verification of a prognostic meteorological and air pollution model for year-long predictions in the Kwinana industrial region of Western Australia

The Lagrangian view of passive scalar turbulence has recently produced interesting results and interpretations. Innovations in theory, experiments, simulations and data analysis of Lagrangian turbu...

/pdf/lagrangian-views-on-turbulent-mixing-of-passive-scalars-54wqgs4yiw.pdf

Lagrangian views on turbulent mixing of passive scalars.

Recirculation of coastal urban air pollution under a synoptic scale thermal trough in Perth, Western Australia

The mean concentration distributionwithin a plume released from a point source in the atmosphericboundary layer can be greatly influenced by the systematic turningof wind with height (i.e. vertical wind direction shear). Such aninfluence includes a deflection of the plume centroid, with anassociated shearing of the vertical plume cross-section, and anenhancement of dispersion, in the horizontal plane. Wind directionshear is normally not accounted for in coastal fumigation models,although dispersion observations with shear acting as acontrolling parameter are not uncommon. A three-dimensionalLagrangian stochastic model is used to investigate the influenceof uniform wind direction shear on the diffusion of a point-sourceplume within the horizontally homogeneous convective boundarylayer, with the source located at the top of the boundary layer.Parameterisations are developed for the plume deflection andenhanced dispersion due to shear within the framework of aprobability density function (PDF) approach, and compared with theLagrangian model results. These parameterisations are thenincorporated into two applied coastal fumigation models: a PDFmodel, and a commonly used model that assumes uniform andinstantaneous mixing in the vertical direction. The PDF modelrepresents the vertical mixing process more realistically. A moreefficient version of the PDF model, which assumes a well-mixedconcentration distribution in the vertical at large times, isapplied to simulate sulfur dioxide data from the Kwinana CoastalFumigation Study. A comparison between the model results and thedata show that the model performs much better when the wind-sheareffects are included.

The Influence Of Vertical Wind Direction Shear On Dispersion In The Convective Boundary Layer, And Its Incorporation In Coastal Fumigation Models

Fumigation under sea-breeze conditions is a major feature of the air pollution meteorology in the coastal industrial region of Kwinana, south of Perth in Western Australia. An intensive field experiment on fumigation was carried out in the region in early 1995 with the objective of using the measured data to develop and test a shoreline fumigation model. Fumigation of plumes from the Kwinana Power Station was studied using an instrumented research aircraft, radiosonde balloons, meteorological stations, a lidar, a mobile surface sampler, and sonic anemometers. The study has yielded a detailed and high quality data set as a result of both the range of observations undertaken and of the regularity of the sea-breeze conditions under scrutiny. The details of the experiment are summarised in this paper and some typical results are presented.

The Kwinana coastal fumigation study : I - Program overview, experimental design and selected results

This study is focussed on the Central Coast region of New South Wales, on the east coast of Australia, where Pacific Power Inc. operates three power stations, situated on small lakes within a few kilometres of the coast. One of the objectives of the study was to assess the suitability and value of our modelling system to the air quality assessment needs of Pacific Power in the region, including the evaluation of green-fields sites for future power stations. The dispersion of plumes from all power stations throughout the year is not only influenced by the terrain blocking and channeling of the synoptic winds, but also by mesoscale wind systems such as sea breezes and drainage flows. Our Lagrangian Atmospheric Dispersion Model (LADM) predicts winds and turbulence and uses these to simulate the transport and diffusion of emissions from discrete sources, for impact distances ranging from hundreds of metres to a few hundred kilometres. In this paper we compare LADM results to available observations in the far field.

J. A. Noonan

Papers

The Kwinana coastal fumigation study : I - Program overview, experimental design and selected results

Dispersion Modelling and Observations from Elevated Sources in Coastal Terrain