Impacts of Sea–Land Breeze Circulation on the Formation and Development of Coastal Sea Fog along the Shandong Peninsula: A Case Study

Abstract

Among the China Seas, the Yellow Sea has the highest occurrence frequency of sea fog that can be categorized into widespread sea fog and coastal sea fog. In this paper, we study a typical coastal sea fog along the Shandong Peninsula that is accompanied by sea-land breezes. Based on a series of numerical experiments conducted by the Weather Research and Forecasting model with high spatial resolution, the impacts of the sea–land breezes on the formation and development of sea fog are investigated in detail. The land breeze can act as an accelerator that enhances humidification and cooling near the coast which promotes sea fog formation during the nighttime, resulting from nearshore vapor convergence and offshore cool-air transportation jointly by the descending branch and low-level breeze of the land breeze circulation. During the daytime, the sea breeze acts as a reducer that inhibits sea fog development, including the contraction of fog area caused by onshore advection of the sea breeze on cloud liquid water, and the restraint of fog vertical growth due to warming and drying by the descending branch of the sea breeze circulation.