Variations on a Theme

wIdeal conditions for a strong sea breeze are a bright, sunny day with a light offshore wind (that is, a wind blowing from land to sea). Clouds would prevent the land from heating up rapidly, and a strong pressure gradient would not develop. A light offshore wind seems to maximize the convergence and produce a sharp sea breeze front. Too strong an offshore wind, and the sea breeze circulation never develops. If the ambient wind is onshore, you never get a strong front forming, but there is an enhancement of the onshore wind during the day because of the additional pressure gradient from the heating.

As a sea breeze moves inland, it begins to lose its punch, for two reasons. First, as the cold air passes over the heated land, its temperature rises. By late in the day, the temperature of the sea breeze air may be almost as high as the temperature of air that was over land the entire day. Second, the coriolis force accelerates the air to the right (in the northern hemisphere). The coriolis force is zero at the equator and strongest near the poles, so sea breezes tend to penetrate farther inland in the tropics and subtropics than in middle and high latitudes.

Even when there is a strong sea breeze along the coast, inland stations 100-200 km from the water may never receive the sea breeze. Or the sea breeze will arrive late in the day and not cause much of a change in the weather when it does arrive. In College Station, the only sign of a sea breeze is usually a line of convective clouds which move through between 6 and 9 PM.

The sea breeze need not be caused by the sea. The same phenomenon can occur along any large body of water, such as the Great Lakes. A very recent article on lake breezes (by M. Segal et al. in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, June 1997) reports, based on observations and numerical simulations, that a lake width on the order of twenty kilometers is sufficient to produce a breeze comparable in strength to a sea breeze.

Sea breezes are most common in the spring and summer, when the land tends to be warmer than the water. Water takes longer to respond to changes in solar radiation, so peak summertime temperatures are reached first over land and later over water.

Rank the following cities based on their likelihood to experience a strong sea breeze.

Please use integers 1 through 5, with 1 being the most likely to get a sea breeze.