California State University, Chico, REAL Observations of California Sea-Breeze Fronts

Welcome to 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. (Click here to see site location on Google Maps.) REAL collected these observations while being deployed as part of the Canopy Horizontal Array Turbulence Study (CHATS).

Two Americal Meteorological Society (AMS) conference publications on these observations exist:

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.
Click here for the 8 MB PDF of the POSTER.

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.
Click here for the 2.9 MB PDF of the PAPER.
Click here to hear and see the RECORDED PRESENTATION.

Data analysis and a full journal article are forthcoming.

Please contact Dr. Shane Mayor for more information.

CASE 1 of 7: March 15, 2007

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.
Click here for MPEG1 of 15 March 2007 sea-breeze front. (File size approximately 33 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.

CASE 3 of 7: April 26, 2007

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.
Click here for MPEG1 of 26 April 2007 sea-breeze front. (File size approximately 36 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.
Click here for MPEG1 of 30 April 2007 sea-breeze front. (File size approximately 42 MB.)

CASE 5 of 7: May 14, 2007

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.

CASE 6 of 7: May 28, 2007

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

CASE 7 of 7: June 10, 2007

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.