Large-eddy simulation of the onset of the sea breeze

As the LES is capable of simulating boundary layerscale, three-dimensional turbulence along with the mesoscale sea-breeze circulation, a parameterization of the planetary boundary layer was unnecessary. The basic experimental design considers a rotating, uniformly stratified, resting atmosphere that is suddenly heated at the surface over the "land" half of the domain.

To focus on the simplest nontrivial problem, the diurnal cycle, effects of moisture, interactions with large-scale winds, and coastline curvature were all neglected in this study. The assumption of a straight coastline allows the use of a rectangular computational domain that extends to 50 km on either side of the coast, but only 5 km along the coast, with 100-m grid intervals so that the small-scale turbulent convective eddies together with the mesoscale sea breeze may be accurately computed.