The onset of a land breeze at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) is both operationally significant and challenging to forecast. The occurrence and timing of the nocturnal land breeze impact low-level winds and stability, low temperatures, and the development of fog. Accurate predictions of the land breeze are especially critical for toxic material dispersion forecasts associated with space launch missions, since wind direction and low-level stability can change dramatically with the passage of a land-breeze front. U.S. Air Force forecasters at KSC/CCAFS can often predict the occurrence of a land breeze for a particular night, but find it challenging to determine the onset time and strength. Several studies have analyzed the sea-breeze phenomena in great detail; however, limited work has been done in understanding the characteristics, structure, and evolution of the land breeze. As a result, the Applied Meteorology Unit (AMU) is analyzing the characteristics of the land breeze at KSC/CCAFS to improve the reliability of the occurrence forecasts and help determine the timing, duration, speed, and direction of the land breeze.

The first aspect of this project is to compile a climatology of the land breeze over east-central Florida to understand its characteristics. To build this climatology, the AMU developed an algorithm that objectively identifies land breeze boundaries from gridded analyses of 44 wind towers over KSC/CCAFS. Five-minute measurements of temperatures and dew point temperatures at 1.8 m, and winds at 16.5-m between the hours of 0000 and 1200 UTC were used to develop a seven-year climatology of daily land breezes from 1995 to 2002, excluding the convective summer months. This paper will present results from the seven-year land-breeze climatology as well as forecasting rules that may improve the accuracy of land-breeze forecasts. The results will focus on characteristics such as the onset time, variations in meteorological quantities, and the conditions favorable for the development of a land breeze.