Author(s)

Leonard J. Pietrafesa^1,2, Shaowu Bao¹, Paul T. Gayes¹, Grant Mitchell¹, Savannah Burdette¹, Brian Viner³, Stephen Noble³, Jian-Hua Qian³, David Werth³

¹School of Coastal & Marine Systems Science, Burroughs & Chapin Center for Marine & Wetland Studies, Coastal Carolina University, Conway, USA.
²Department of Marine, Earth, Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA.
³Savannah River National Laboratory, Aiken, USA.

The study presented herein is the analysis of Sodar based instrument measurements of air temperature, dew point, and vertical wind speed and direction, recorded at two South Carolina sites, Waties Island in North Myrtle Beach and in Sumter, and at three atmospheric ground stations. Two of the ground stations are National Weather Service stations near the Sodars and one is a Coastal Carolina University Sea-Econet, as a part of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, MESO program, weather-sensor site on the Coastal Carolina University campus in Conway South Carolina. Objectives of this study are to establish specific values of winds, land and sea temperatures, precipitation and dew points associated with the changes induced by passages of the Sea Breeze Front, and to examine differences in the station-to-station incarnation of the Sea Breeze circulation. Variability from station to station in the nature and timing of Sea Breeze Front passage is found to be a function of relative proximity to the coast with Sea Breeze Front passage occurring earliest at the North Myrtle Beach site (the station at the coast), then at Sumter (~100 km inland) and finally Aiken at >100 km inland. Satellite based estimates of the percentages of onshore penetration distances from the coast are depicted. Wind vectors and air temperatures associated with onsets and passages of the Sea Breeze display robust wind fields directed onshore perpendicular to the coastline. Kinematical descriptors of the Sea Breeze wind particle motions are presented and display coherent stable elliptical motions during the late summer to early fall but are absent during the winter.

Sea Breeze, Sea-Land Temperature Differences, Wind Sticks

Pietrafesa, L. , Bao, S. , Gayes, P. , Mitchell, G. , Burdette, S. , Viner, B. , Noble, S. , Qian, J. and Werth, D. (2022) The Anatomy of the South Carolina U.S.A. Coastal Sea Breeze 2019-2020. International Journal of Geosciences, 13, 576-592. doi: 10.4236/ijg.2022.137031.