Analysis of the diurnal development of the Ora del Garda wind in the Alps from airborne and surface measurements
Authors: Laiti L. , Zardi D. , de Franceschi M. , Rampanelli G. 
Published: July 2013

Abstract. A lake-breeze and valley-wind coupled circulation system, known as Ora del Garda, typically arises in the late morning from the northern shorelines of Lake Garda (southeastern Italian Alps), and then channels into the Sarca and Lakes valleys to the north. After flowing over an elevated saddle, in the early afternoon this wind breaks out from the west into the nearby Adige Valley, hindering the regular development of the local up-valley wind by producing a strong and gusty anomalous flow in the area. Two targeted flights of an equipped motorglider were performed in the morning and afternoon of 23 August 2001 in the above valleys, exploring selected vertical slices of the atmosphere, from the lake's shore to the area where the two local airflows interact. At the same time, surface observations were collected during an intensive field measurement campaign held in the interaction area, as well as from routinely-operated weather stations disseminated along the whole study area, allowing the analysis of the different stages of the Ora del Garda development. From airborne measurements, an atmospheric boundary-layer (ABL) vertical structure, typical of deep Alpine valleys, was detected in connection with the wind flow, with rather shallow (∼500 m) convective mixed layers surmounted by deeper, weakly stable layers. On the other hand, close to the lake's shoreline the ABL was found to be stabilized down to very low heights, as an effect of the onshore advection of cold air by the lake breeze. Airborne potential temperature observations were mapped over high-resolution 3-D grids for each valley section explored by the flights, using a geostatistical technique called residual kriging (RK). RK-regridded fields revealed fine-scale features and inhomogeneities of ABL thermal structures associated with the complex thermally-driven wind field developing in the valleys. The combined analysis of surface observations and RK-interpolated fields revealed an irregular propagation of the lake-breeze front in the lower part of the valley, and cross-valley thermal asymmetries amenable both to the differential solar heating of the valley slopes and to the valley curvature in its upper part. The overflowing of the potentially cooler Ora del Garda air from the Lakes Valley in the afternoon produces a strong katabatic wind at the bottom of the underlying Adige Valley, which blows in cross-valley (i.e. westerly) direction and impinges on the opposite eastern valley sidewall. RK-regridded potential temperature field highlighted that this phenomenon gives origin to a "hydraulic jump" flow structure in the urban area north of the city of Trento, leading to the down-stream formation of a ∼1300 m deep well-mixed layer. The improved knowledge of the typical Ora del Garda flow patterns and associated ABL structures, deriving from the combined analysis of surface and airborne observations, has practical application in air quality forecasting for the study area, for it helps in the understanding of pollution transport and dispersion processes by thermally-driven winds in the region. Moreover, 3-D meteorological fields produced by RK are likely to be an excellent basis for comparison with results from high-resolution numerical simulations, as they provide a degree of spatial detail that is fully comparable to the spatial scales resolved by large-eddy simulations.