| Popis: |
Sea breeze, as a result of the juxtaposition of contrasting thermal environments, has been the subject of experimental and theoretical studies by meteorologists worldwide, due to both its importance for human activities and fascinating dynamics. Furthermore, the complexity of the geographical characteristics has a strong impact on these contrasting environments and hence influences the structure of the flow. The aim of the present study is to analyse and evaluate the influence of both, the complex terrain and the land use on the formation of the sea breeze in a coastal environment. Rijeka, a region with complex topography and several islands in its surroundings, offers the opportunity to examine these relationships, since the differential heating between the land and the sea frequently generates sea breezes during late spring and summer. The non-hydrostatic mesoscale model MEMO has been used in order to describe the initiation and the evolution of the sea breeze convergence patterns over the Greater Rijeka Area, under summertime anticyclonic weather conditions. For this study, three multi-day periods characterised by stagnant meteorological conditions were selected. Results show that MEMO is capable of simulating mesoscale wind flow reasonably well. Further investigation related to the choice of some of the input model parameters and parameterization employed, is considered valuable in order to improve the model performance. For that reason, model results for 2 different land use databases were compared with the available measurements. Subsequently, the influence of individual islands on the sea breeze structure was investigated. For every island in the region two simulations were performed ; one was carried out with the particular island topography and the land use data, while for the other the island was replaced by sea. |
