Is the Rawasheen's Breeze Still There? Afternoon Sea-Breeze Persistence over Historic Jeddah (Al-Balad), 1940–2025

Working paper testing whether the afternoon west-to-north (onshore) wind that Historic Jeddah's rawasheen were designed to catch has changed between 1940 and 2025, using 753,888 hourly ERA5 records (via Open-Meteo) for the grid cell containing Al-Balad. About 68% of afternoon hours (13:00-17:00) have wind from 270-360 degrees; the share was 67.2% in 1940-1969 and 67.7% in 1996-2025, with no significant Mann-Kendall trend (tau = -0.050, p = 0.50). Results are robust across direction sectors and time windows. Limitations of the ~25 km reanalysis resolution are discussed. Code: https://github.com/amirator/al-balad-sea-breeze-era5