A central aspect of the Field Experiment on Sub-Mesoscale Spatio-Temporal Variability in Lindenberg (FESSTVaL, www.fesstval.de) is the investigation of wind gusts with Doppler lidar measurements. Compared to meteorological tower observations, they have the advantage of being able to probe higher altitudes of the atmosphere, they thus offer the possibility to record a vertical profile of wind gusts with a resolution of about 30 m in the atmospheric boundary layer. Nevertheless, it is difficult to capture wind gusts with these instruments as it is challenging to measure fluctuations of short duration with an instrument which needs a certain time for one complete measurement.
Based on the research of Suomi et al. (2017), different configurations were tested in a pre-campaign in autumn 2019 to identify a suitable measurement mode for Halo Photonics Stream Line Scanning Doppler LiDAR systems. Different lidars were operated in parallel to compare configurations against each other. A promising mode was tested during the FESST@MOL campaign in summer 2020 for a three month period. This is a continous scan mode (CSM) configuration that takes about 3.4 seconds per circulation and performs measurements in 10-11 directions.
The derived wind gusts and mean wind speeds are compared with high resolution sonic anemometer measurements at 90.3 m to verify the quality of the lidar measurements. In a first comparison good agreement is shown despite the different measuring principles. In addition, various parameters are tested to identify optimal thresholds that allow a reliable derivation of wind gusts.
In summer 2021 this fast CSM mode will be operated and further tested in the FESSTVaL campaign in parallel with UAS measurements. Moreover lidars will be installed at different locations to analyse the spatial characteristics of wind gusts with this scanning configuration.
Reference
Suomi, I., Gryning, S.‐E., O'Connor, E.J. and Vihma, T. (2017), Methodology for obtaining wind gusts using Doppler lidar. Q.J.R. Meteorol. Soc., 143: 2061-2072. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3059
How to cite: Detring, C., Steinheuer, J., Päschke, E., Leinweber, R., Kayser, M., and Beyrich, F.: First results of a promising Doppler lidar configuration to derive wind gusts within the FESSTVaL campaign, EMS Annual Meeting 2021, online, 6–10 Sep 2021, EMS2021-247, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-247, 2021.
