Land breezes occur at night, as the land cools down more quickly than the sea. The cold air sinking over the land pushes out to the low-pressure area over the sea. Land breezes tend to be lighter than sea breezes, as the difference in temperature between the sea and the land during the night is only slight. Land and sea breezes help make a coastal climate very different from that inland.
Land breeze, a local wind system characterized by a flow from land to water late at night. Land breezes alternate with sea breezes along coastlines adjacent to large bodies of water. Both are induced by differences that occur between the heating or cooling of the water surface and the adjacent land surface. The land breeze is typically shallower than the sea breeze since the cooling of the atmosphere over land is confined to a shallower layer at night than the heating of the air during the day. Since the surface flow of the land breeze terminates over water, a region of low-level air convergence is produced. Locally, such convergence often induces the upward movement of air, fostering the development of clouds. Therefore, it is not uncommon to see clouds lying off the coast at night, which are later dissipated by the daytime sea breeze.
The air over the ocean is now warmer than the air over the land. The land loses heat quickly after the sun goes down and the air above it cools too. This can be compared to a blacktop road. During the day, the blacktop road heats up and becomes very hot to walk on. At night, however, the blacktop has given up the added heat and is cool to the touch. The ocean, however, is able to hold onto this heat after the sun sets and not lose it as easily. This causes the low surface pressure to shift to over the ocean during the night and the high surface pressure to move over the land. This causes a small temperature gradient between the ocean surface and the nearby land at night and the wind will blow from the land to the ocean creating the land breeze.
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