ERIES-LIDAR: Lidar measurements of Ligurian downslope windstorms

This dataset contains continuous Doppler-wind lidar measurements of downslope winds (DW) that flow from the Turchino Valley over the city and Port of Genoa, Italy, acquired between December 2024 and March 2025 in the framework of the ERIES Transnational Access project ERIES-LIDAR (Lidar measurements of Ligurian downslope windstorms). Measurements were collected with a Vaisala WindCube 400S (2018 version) pulsed scanning Doppler lidar (instrument identifier WLS400s-118) operated by the University of Genoa from a quay of the Port of Genoa (44.4175°N, 8.7768°E; 5 m above mean sea level). During this period, 6 DW events were observed (further details can be found in Ivancic et al., 2025). Two predefined scan families were operated cyclically: (i) eight Range-Height Indicator (RHI) scans at azimuths 295°-330° (step 5°) and 0–15° elevation (0.5° resolution), (ii) five Plan Position Indicator (PPI) scans across azimuths 295°-330° (0.5° resolution) at fixed elevations 2.5°-12.5° (step 2.5°). The measurements are sampled along the LiDAR beam every 100 m (gate spacing), starting from 300 m to 14 km from the LiDAR location. The campaign is split into six sub-campaigns — T1 (3–6 December 2024; 8 RHI), T2 (6-13 December 2024; 8 RHI), T3 (13-14 December 2024; 8 RHI + 5 PPI), T4 (6-10 February 2025; 8 RHI + 5 PPI), T5 (19-20 February 2025; RHI only azinuth 320°), and T6 (1-5 March 2025; 8 RHI + 5 PPI) — yielding more than 38,000 NetCDF-4 files (CF/Radial 2.0) packaged in six ZIP archives. Each archive corresponds to an individual sub-campaign. The naming convention for directories is Tramontana_YYYY_MM_DD-YYYY_MM_DD, where YYYY_MM_DD corresponds to the starting and ending date of the measurements for the considered event. Each directory contains all scans carried out during that sub-campaign, stored as individual NetCDF files following the filename convention WLS400s-118_YYYY-MM-DD_hh-mm-ss_scantype_scanID_150m.nc, where YYYY-MM-DD_hh-mm-ss represents the UTC date and time, scantype identifies the type of scan (RHI or PPI), and scanID is the LiDAR scan identification code. Each NetCDF file contains the scan geometry (azimuthal angle(s), elevation angle(s), range-gate distance), timestamp information, radial wind speed measurements and quality indicators, including the carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) and a quality control flag. The quality control flag value QC_flag = 1 (valid data) corresponds to CNR >= -29 dB. The radial wind speed is reported in m/s, with positive values indicating outward flows and negative values indicating towards-the-LiDAR flows. This data set provides valuable resources for research investigating downslope winds. The data set can be used to validate numerical models and improve the physical understanding of this phenomenon.