Results from a three-month intercomparison of boundary-layer wind profiler and sodar wind measurements at Lindenberg, Germany

Abstract

Intercomparison experiments with a wind profiler and a Doppler sodar have been performed at the Meteorological Observatory Lindenberg of the German Weather Service in summer, 1994, and in autumn, 1995, over a total period of about three months. The paper presents selected results of the wind measurements performed with the two systems. Sodar and wind profiler are shown to complement each other quite well. Therefore, a combination of both is a promising tool for continuous, high-resolution measurements of the wind profile. A problem to be solved is the construction of composite wind profiles when the measurements with the two systems disagree in the height range of overlapping. Measurements of the vertical velocity are difficult to assess due to their small absolute values. Long-term averages of the vertical velocity show slightly negative values, especially for the wind profiler. However, similar signatures have been found in the vertical velocity time series during frontal passages or during well-developed convection.

Keywords

• german weather service
• sodar profiler
• wind profiler
• convection
• grenzschicht-windprofiler
• doppler-sodar