Characteristics of Fog over the Grand Casablanca coastal region in Morocco

What is it about?

In the literature, studies lack sufficient detail on the local-scale aspects of coastal fog formation over continental areas, in association with large-scale weather patterns taking into account the environmental conditions. Thus, more clarification on the interaction among all scales is needed to better understand the whole fog mechanism. The primary goal of this study is to understand the fog behavior over the continental part of the Grand Casablanca region, Morocco, by identifying the local fog characteristics and by investigating the space–time distribution at regional scale in relation to large-scale weather and environmental conditions (urban, suburban, and rural). This study also aims to highlight the main physical processes leading to fog onset through the analysis of local meteorological and synoptic conditions.

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Why is it important?

Our findings show that advection fog is rare over this continental region in contrary to most coastal regions. The spatial distribution analysis of fog events indicates the localized character of fog occurrence. For widespread fog events, there are likely to be two different types when fog simultaneously occurs at the two stations, even if the distance between the two stations is about 30 km. This implies that, from a geographical standpoint, the physical mechanisms involved into the formation process are distinct during the spatial evolution of widespread fog events. The analysis of local meteorological and synoptic conditions shows that advective processes at mesoscales associated with seabreeze circulation during the afternoon and followed by radiative processes early in the night (local cooling) often lead to fog formation over the studied coastal region.

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