Unsteady Land‐Sea Breeze Circulations in the Presence of a Synoptic Pressure Forcing

Abstract Unsteady land‐sea breezes (LSBs) that result from time‐varying surface temperature contrasts Δ θ ( t ) are explored in the presence of a constant synoptic pressure forcing, M g , oriented from sea to land ( α = 0°) or land to sea ( α = 180°). Large eddy simulations reveal the development of four distinctive regimes, depending on the joint interaction between M g , α , and Δ θ ( t ) in modulating the fine‐scale dynamics. Time lags, computed as the shifts that maximize correlation coefficients of the velocity between the unsteady and the corresponding steady scenarios at Δ θ = Δ θ max , are found to be significant and to extend 2 hr longer for α = 0° compared to α = 180°. These diurnal dynamics result in nonequilibrium conditions that are significantly affected by the flow history, and that behave differently over the two patches for the different α ’s. Turbulence is found to be out of equilibrium with the mean flow, and the mean itself is found to be out of equilibrium with the thermal forcing. The sea surface heat flux is consistently more sensitive than its land counterpart to the time‐varying external forcing Δ θ ( t ), and more so for synoptic forcing from land to sea ( α = 180°). Hence, although the land reaches equilibrium faster, the sea patch is found to exert a stronger control on the turbulence‐mean flow equilibrium response. Finally, the vertical velocity profile at the shore and shore‐normal velocity transects at the first grid level are shown to encode the multiscale regimes of the LSBs evolution and can thus be used to identify these regimes using k ‐means clustering.