THERMAL CIRCULATIONS - IMPORTANT CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS

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