Climatology of Sea–Land Breezes along the Southern Coast of the Levantine Basin

Climatology of Sea–Land Breezes along the Southern Coast of the Levantine Basin

Tarek M. El-Geziry¹, Mohamed Elbessa², Kareem M. Tonbol²

طارق محمد الجزيري، محمد البسة، كريم محمود طنبل

• Marine Environment Division – Physical Oceanography Lab (NIOF)
• College of Maritime Transport and Technology (CMTT), Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT), Abu-Qir, Alexandria, Egypt

Pure and Applied Geophysics, 2021, 178: 1927-1941

https://www.springer.com/journal/24

Indexed in Scopus

Abstract:

The present work can be considered the first to examine the sea–land breeze phenomenon along the southern border of the Levantine Basin. Hourly records of wind regime (speed and direction) from five coastal meteorological stations distributed over this coastline were analyzed to characterize sea and land breezes in this region. The meteorological data also comprised simultaneous hourly air temperature and relative humidity records.The data covered 13 years from January 2007 to December 2019, with 0% missed data. The diurnal inversion of wind direction was utilized to recognize sea and land breeze days. This was verified by the reversal daily behavior of temperature and relative humidity.Statistics describing the onset, cessation, and seasonality of sea breeze occurrence are presented. Seasonally, sea breezes are most frequent in summer and early autumn months (July–October). Land breeze appears at most stations during night, with direction varying from one location to another among the five examined coastal stations.

Keywords: Sea breeze, land breeze, southern Levantine Basin, Egypt, wind.

Corresponding author e-mail: [email protected]