Summary of atmospheric characteristics of days with inland penetrating sea breezes from 2015 to 2021

Abstract

Sea breezes penetrate inland more than 100 km. Using 7 years of meteorological observations, we have identified 470 cases of deep inland (>100 km) penetrating sea breezes at the Savannah River Site between March and October (27% of days) of 2015–2021. We compared measurements of temperature, dewpoint temperature, incoming solar radiation, cloud fraction, and lightning on days of sea breeze initiation, the day after the sea breeze passage, and all other nonsea breeze (NSB) days for these 8 months over the 7 years. Days of sea breeze initiation were found to have lower cloud fraction, higher temperature, and greater incoming solar radiation compared with NSB days. Variations occurred by time of year as days after the sea breeze passage were found to have higher dewpoint temperature than NSB days in the spring. Lightning density measurements indicated that residual sea breeze conditions could drive earlier initiation of deep convection on days following the sea breeze than normal non sea breeze days. This data set provides a 7‐year record of sea breezes which can be leveraged for future studies.