Understanding the Lake Breeze Front in Eastern WI Through Remote Sensing and Aircraft Measurements

Abstract

The lake breeze is a meteorological phenomenon which factors into the air quality near the shorelines of Lake Michigan with significant impacts in studies of meteorology, chemistry, atmospheric physics, and more. Using high resolution radar imagery of base reflectivity on days with ozone levels greater than 70ppb, we were able to categorize near-shore and inland lake breeze events from the historic ground-based monitoring data sets, to better quantify the correlation between lake breeze events with ozone episodes. During the Lake Michigan Ozone Study of 2017, an aircraft flew spirals above and within the marine inversion layer. One such day captured spirals above the lake breeze front at a shoreline site, with unique signatures of small spatial gradients in ozone and wind direction in the spiral. We intend to use the data collected from the aircraft platform to understand the low altitude meteorology and air quality relationships near this lake breeze front.