Atmospheric Measurement Techniques (Mar 2017)

Assessment of virtual towers performed with scanning wind lidars and Ka-band radars during the XPIA experiment

  • M. Debnath,
  • G. V. Iungo,
  • W. A. Brewer,
  • A. Choukulkar,
  • R. Delgado,
  • S. Gunter,
  • J. K. Lundquist,
  • J. L. Schroeder,
  • J. M. Wilczak,
  • D. Wolfe

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-1215-2017
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 3
pp. 1215 – 1227

Abstract

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During the eXperimental Planetary boundary layer Instrumentation Assessment (XPIA) campaign, which was carried out at the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory (BAO) in spring 2015, multiple-Doppler scanning strategies were carried out with scanning wind lidars and Ka-band radars. Specifically, step–stare measurements were collected simultaneously with three scanning Doppler lidars, while two scanning Ka-band radars carried out simultaneous range height indicator (RHI) scans. The XPIA experiment provided the unique opportunity to compare directly virtual-tower measurements performed simultaneously with Ka-band radars and Doppler wind lidars. Furthermore, multiple-Doppler measurements were assessed against sonic anemometer data acquired from the meteorological tower (met-tower) present at the BAO site and a lidar wind profiler. This survey shows that – despite the different technologies, measurement volumes and sampling periods used for the lidar and radar measurements – a very good accuracy is achieved for both remote-sensing techniques for probing horizontal wind speed and wind direction with the virtual-tower scanning technique.