Comparison of wind measurements from different Doppler lidar scan strategies and two lidar brands with an ultrasonic anemometer

Technology has reached a point where ground-based remote sensing instruments have the ability to greatly increase the spatial and temporal data density compared to conventional instruments. This offers the great opportunity to improve the understanding of individual processes and to increase the predictive capabilities of numerical weather models and reduce their inaccuracies. The goal of this study is to assess these measurement inaccuracies and the usefulness of Doppler lidar systems for these purposes. The data were collected during the FESST@MOL 2020 measurement campaign, organised by the German Weather Service (DWD) and initiated by the Hans-Ertel-Center for Weather Research (HErZ), at the boundary layer field site (GM) of the DWD in Falkenberg (Tauche), Germany. During the measurement campaign, a total of eight Doppler lidars of the brands Halo Photonics and Leosphere were active in different operating modes. We compare the results of triple and single Halo Photonics lidar setups and triple Leosphere lidar setups with the measurements of an ultrasonic anemometer mounted at a height of 90 m at the 99 m high instrumented tower in Falkenberg. The focus of the operating modes was on various virtual tower (VT) measurements and velocity azimuth display (VAD) measurements with the different averaging times of ten and thirty minutes for the mean horizontal wind. The discrepancy in readings between VT and VAD measurements increases with increasing height above the ground while the Halo Photonic lidars performed better in the comparison with the sonic anemometer.