Rotation of sea/land breezes along the northeastern Adriatic coast

Abstract. The diurnal evolution of the sea/land breeze hodographs over the northeastern Adriatic coast has been examined for several episodes, each lasting a few days. A limited set of observations, as well as the results of a three-dimensional nonhydrostatic mesoscale model are studied by applying a rotary-component method. This revealed a spatial distribution of the clockwise versus anti-clockwise rotation of the wind vectors for the sea/land breeze events. An application of the rotary-component method to the results of additional numerical sensitivity tests showed that the coastal topography height considerably influences both the shape of the wind hodographs and the sense of wind rotation. The method also displayed which areas are under a strong influence of the 24-h topographic forcing and which areas show a large wind consistency. A further analysis of the 24-h modeled wind hodographs at several selected stations has been performed, thus revealing the hodograph shapes and the reasons for them.