Mesoscale Disturbances Over Manila and Adjacent Coastal Areas Due to Diurnal heating of the Ground

A simple atmospheric model is used to simulate the occurrence of weather disturbances during the afternoon and the early evening hours. Thsee weather disturbances are associated with local wind circulations which are generated by the solar heating of the ground surface. The local or mesoscale circulations consist of sea breezes and uplope winds along mountain sides. The dependence of these local circulations on the large scale prevailing wind is studied by conducting numerical experiments with the atmospheric model. The results of the study indicates that the winds as well as the cloudiness and rainfall, which are associated with the local circulations, are strongly dependent on the speed and direction of the prevailing large scale wind The simulations of this simple model have been compared with a nested MM5 model. The comparison indicates that the simulated behavior of the mesoscale disturbances with both models are very similar.