If the flow aloft is aligned with the direction of the sea breeze, places experiencing the sea breeze frontal passage will have benign, or fair, weather for the remainder of the day. When powerful this front creates cumulus clouds, and if the air is humid and unstable, the front can sometimes trigger thunderstorms. The cold air from the sea meets the warmer air from the land and creates a boundary like a shallow cold front. If the air inland is moist, cumulus often marks the front.Ī sea-breeze front is a weather front created by a sea breeze, also known as a convergence zone. Schematic cross section through a sea-breeze front. If a strong offshore wind is present (that is, a wind greater than 8 knots (15 km/h)) and opposing the direction of a possible sea breeze, the sea breeze is not likely to develop. The strength of the sea breeze is directly proportional to the temperature difference between the land and the sea. The air above the sea has a relatively higher pressure, causing air near the coast to flow towards the lower pressure over land. The warming air expands and becomes less dense, decreasing the pressure over the land near the coast. As the temperature of the surface of the land rises, the land heats the air above it by convection. The sea has a greater heat capacity than land, so the surface of the sea warms up more slowly than the surface of the land. (For practical reasons, other offshore wind farms are situated further out to sea and rely on prevailing winds rather than sea breezes.) While many onshore wind farms and offshore wind farms do not rely on these winds, a nearshore wind farm is a type of offshore wind farm located on shallow coastal waters to take advantage of both sea and land breezes.

Wind farms are often situated near a coast to take advantage of the normal daily fluctuations of wind speed resulting from sea or land breezes.

The term offshore wind may refer to any wind over open water.

Sea breezes and land breezes are both important factors in coastal regions' prevailing winds. By contrast, a land breeze or offshore breeze is the reverse effect: dry land also cools more quickly than water and, after sunset, a sea breeze dissipates and the wind instead flows from the land towards the sea. Because land heats up much faster than water under solar radiation, a sea breeze is a common occurrence along coasts after sunrise. As such, sea breezes are more localised than prevailing winds. A sea breeze or onshore breeze is any wind that blows from a large body of water toward or onto a landmass it develops due to differences in air pressure created by the differing heat capacities of water and dry land.

Land breeze