THERMAL CIRCULATIONS - IMPORTANT CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS
- How does a thermal low form? Is it shallow or deep?
- Why is a land breeze typically weaker than the sea breeze?
- What month of the year might you observe the strongest sea breezes along coastal Maine?
- How do T, P, q, wind speed and wind direction change during sea breeze passage?
- How "deep" is the sea breeze air?
- Are sea-breeze fronts stronger kinematically during off or onshore flow days?
- Why can the sea-breeze front location be observed in clear-air radar data?
- What factors are important for controlling the strength of a sea-breeze front? How and why does frontal strength vary during the day?
- What factors appear to be important for controlling the inland penetration distance for the sea breeze?
- What is a density current?
- What two common instabilities form along the sea-breeze front head?
- fundamentally, what controls the propagation speed of a density current?
- To what extent do density current dynamics explain the propagation speed of sea breeze fronts?
- when and why is the UHI greatest?