Which phenomenon describes the movement of air from land to sea at night, created when cooler, denser air from the land forces up warmer air over the sea?

• A. Land breeze
• B. Sea breeze
• C. Diurnal wind
• D. Coastal wind

Answer: (A)

This describes a land breeze, which is part of the daily cycle of coastal winds driven by how quickly land and sea heat and cool.

At night, land cools off faster than the sea. The air over the land becomes cooler and denser, creating higher surface pressure compared to the air over the sea. To balance this, cooler air moves from the land out toward the sea, where it tends to rise over the warmer air above the water. In this way, air flows from land to sea, producing a breeze from the land toward the sea. This is the nighttime counterpart to the daytime sea breeze, when the land is hot and air rises there, drawing in cooler air from the sea toward land.