La Mancha Sea Breeze Circulation

August Kaiser, “La Mancha Sea Breeze Circulation”
Mentor: Jonathan Kahl, Atmospheric Science

The La Mancha site is a historical site on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, about 70km north of the city of Veracruz. The historical monuments at the site have been damaged by acid rain over the past 20 years. It is the aim of this study to find a relationship between the wind direction and the acidity of the rain in order to locate the pollution sources that lead to the acid rain. The sea breeze circulation is a a local meteorological phenonium that occurs along coast lines all over the world. To calculate the sea breeze for the La Mancha site three years of wind speed and direction was gather from a station at the Port of Veracruz. That data was the broken down into is east-west and north-south component forms in order to determine what direction the wind was coming from. With this information it is possible to analyze how the wind changes with time. Changes were measured on a daily, monthly, seasonal and yearly time scale in order to see when the sea breezy may be most influential. From this analyzation it is evident that there is a sea breeze circulation near the La Mancha site which means that on days the sea breezy is present local sources of pollution may be responsible for the acidification of the rain.

Comments

  1. Thanks for that detailed report, Gus! What a great project. What’s the next step? What should locals take from your analysis? Is there a way to save these monuments/reduce this acid rain? Thanks for your hard work!

    1. Hi Professor Benesh,

      Currently I’m working to define a set of parameters the classify a sea breeze day. This will hopefully give us an understanding of how often a sea breeze is present near La Mancha. After that the hope is that we can identify pollution sources that are enhanced by a sea breeze. This will then help local authorities in proposing more effective regulations to reduce the acidity of the rain.

      Thank You

      Gus Kaiser

  2. Hi Gus – thanks for sharing your research! Nicely done. Good luck in devising your sea breeze detection algorithm!

  3. Gus,
    Great project! How did you become interested in this topic? Why is this site important to examine? I see that monument at this site have been impacted by acid rain, but why would others be interested in this site in particular?

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