Atmospheric boundary layer structures associated with the Ora del Garda wind in the Alps as revealed from airborne and surface measurements

Abstract

The paper investigates a coupled lake-breeze and valley-wind system, known as Ora del Garda. The latter typically originates on clear-sky days over the northern shore of Lake Garda in the Alps. After channelling into the nearby Sarca Valley and Lakes Valley, this airflow finally breaks out, through an elevated saddle, into the adjacent Adige Valley, where it strongly interacts with the local valley wind. Two flights of an instrumented motorglider explored, under different synoptic conditions, the thermal structure of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) associated with this wind at selected vertical sections—namely over the lake shore, at mid-valley, and at the junction with the Adige Valley. Data from airborne measurements, as well as from weather stations disseminated along the valley floor, provided the basis for mapping 3D fields of potential temperature over high-resolution grids by means of a Residual Kriging (RK) technique. This representation allowed the identification of site-specific ABL features associated with the Ora del Garda. In particular, a typical daytime coastal-breeze structure is detected in the lake shore region, where the advection of colder air tends to stabilize the atmosphere throughout the ABL depth. Mid-valley vertical profiles from both flights display shallow convective mixed layers, surmounted by deeper weakly stable layers. On the other hand, RK-gridded temperature maps show cross-valley thermal asymmetries, amenable to the complex topography and to the inhomogeneous surface coverage, as well as to a curvature of the valley axis. Finally, in the area where the upper Lakes Valley joins the Adige Valley, specific features associated with the complex interaction between the Ora del Garda and the local up-valley wind are found.