REAL Observations of California Sea-Breeze Fronts

This page presents Raman-shifted Eye-safe Aerosol Lidar (REAL) observations of seven sea-breeze fronts (the advancing edge of the "Delta Breeze") collected near Dixon, California, in the spring of 2007. These sea-breeze fronts are the pronounced leading edges of "density currents" transporting marine air from the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region into the Central Valley. For these observations, the lidar was located at: 38.502305 N Lat., 121.84541 W Lon. (Here is the site location on Google Maps.) REAL collected these observations while being deployed as part of the Canopy Horizontal Array Turbulence Study (CHATS).

A journal article and two American Meteorological Society (AMS) conference publications on these observations exist:

Mayor, S. D., 2010: Observations of seven density current fronts in Dixon, California, Mon. Wea. Rev., 139, 1338-1351.

Mayor, S. D., S. M. Spuler, and B. M. Morley, 2008: Raman-shifted Eye-safe Aerosol Lidar. Poster presentation P1.1 in the Symposium on Recent Developments in Atmospheric Applications of Radar and Lidar. 88th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society, 21-24 Jan. 2008, New Orleans.

Mayor, S. D., S. M. Spuler, B. M. Morley, S. C. Himmelsbach, R. A. Rilling, T. M. Weckwerth, E. G. Patton, and D. H. Lenschow, 2007: Elastic backscatter lidar observations of sea-breeze fronts in Dixon, California. Paper 8.5 in the Seventh Conference on Coastal Atmospheric and Oceanic Prediction and Processes, American Meteorological Society, 10-13 Sept. 2007, San Diego. Recorded Presentation.


Case 1 of 7: March 15, 2007

This Video has an HD option. (Lower right of the movie viewer.)

This front passed over the CHATS in situ site at approximately 00:50 UTC on 15 March 2007. The animation is composed of 315 frames between 23:39 UTC on March 14 and 02:18 UTC on March 15.

MPEG of 15 March 2007 sea-breeze front. (File size approximately 4 MB.)


Case 2 of 7: April 24, 2007

This front passed over the CHATS in situ site at approximately 00:37 UTC on 24 April 2007. A long continuous sequence of both near-simultaneous horizontal and vertical scans, as shown for the other cases, is not available for this case because the lidar was operating with a scan strategy designed to obtain high resolution data near the tower.

MPEG of 24 April 2007 sea-breeze front. (File size approximately 1 MB.)


Case 3 of 7: April 26, 2007

This Video has an HD option. (Lower right of the movie viewer.)

This front passed over the CHATS in situ site at approximately 23:25 UTC on 26 April 2007. The animation consists of 374 frames between 21:53 UTC on 26 April and 01:01 UTC on 27 April.

MPEG of 26 April 2007 sea-breeze front. (File size approximately 4 MB.)


Case 4 of 7: May 1, 2007

This front passed over the CHATS in situ site at approximately 1:00 UTC on 1 May 2007. The animation consists of 374 frames between 23:46 UTC on April 30 and 2:54 UTC on May 1.

MPEG of 1 May 2007 sea-breeze front. (File size approximately 4 MB.)


Case 5 of 7: May 14, 2007

This Video has an HD option. (Lower right of the movie viewer.)

This front passed over the CHATS site at approximately 23:13 UTC on 14 May 2007. The animation is made up of 265 frames between 22:09 UTC and 00:23 UTC on 15 May.

MPEG of 14 May 2007 sea-breeze front. (File size approximately 4 MB.)


Case 6 of 7: May 28, 2007

MPEG of 28 May 2007 sea-breeze front. (File size approximately 1 MB.)

MPEG of 28 May 2007 sea-breeze front. (File size approximately 1 MB.)

This front passed over the CHATS site at about 22:48 UTC on 28 May 2007.


Case 7 of 7: June 10, 2007

MPEG of 28 May 2007 sea-breeze front. (File size approximately 1 MB.)

This front passed over the CHATS in situ site at approximately 21:39 UTC on 10 June 2007. A long continuous sequence of both near-simultaneous horizontal and vertical scans, as shown for the other cases, is not available for this case because the lidar was operating with a scan strategy designed to obtain high resolution data near the tower.


Further Reading:

Kolev, I., O. Parvanov, B. Kaprielov, E. Donev, and D. Ivanov, 1998: Lidar observations of sea-breeze and land-breeze aerosol structure on the Black Sea, J. Appl. Meteor., 37, 982-995.

Nakane, H. and Y. Sasano, 1986: Structure of a seabreeze front revealed by scanning lidar observation, J. Meteor. Soc. Japan, 64, 787-792.

Simpson, J. E., 1997: Gravity Currents: In the Environment and the Laboratory, Cambridge University Press, Second Edition. 244 pages.

Simpson, J. E., 1994: Sea Breeze and Local Winds, Cambridge University Press, Reprinted in 2007.