Comparing triple and single Doppler lidar wind measurements with sonic anemometer data based on a new filter strategy for virtual tower measurements

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Abstract

In this study, we compare the wind measurements of a virtual tower triple Doppler lidar setup to those of a sonic anemometer located at a height of 90m above ground on an instrumented tower and with those of two single Doppler lidars to evaluate the effect of the horizontal homogeneity assumption used for single Doppler lidar applications on the measurement accuracy. The triple lidar setup was operated in a 90m stare and a step-stare mode at six heights between 90 and 500m above ground, while the single lidars were operated in a continuous scan velocity-Azimuth display (VAD) mode where one of them had a zenith angle of 54.7° and the other one of 28.0°. The instruments were set up at the boundary-layer field site of the German Meteorological Service (DWD) in July and August of 2020 during the FESST@MOL (Field Experiment on sub-mesoscale spatiotemporal variability at the Meteorological Observatory Lindenberg) 2020 campaign. Overall, we found good agreement of the lidar methods for the whole study period for different averaging times and scan modes compared to the sonic anemometer. For the step-stare mode wind speed measurements, the comparability between the triple lidar and the sonic anemometer was 0.47ms-1 at an averaging time of 30min with a bias value of-0.34ms-1. For wind speed measured by one single lidar setup for the same period with an averaging time of 30min, we found a comparability of 0.32ms-1 at an averaging time of 30min and a bias value of-0.07ms-1 as well as values of 0.47 and-0.34ms-1 for the other one, respectively. We also compared the wind velocity measurements of the single and triple lidars at different heights and found decreasing agreement between them with increasing measurement height up to 495m above ground for the single lidar systems. We found that the single Doppler lidar with the increased zenith angle produced poorer agreement with the triple Doppler lidar setup than the one with the lower zenith angle, especially at higher altitudes. At a height of 495m above ground and with an averaging time of 30min the comparability and bias for the larger zenith angle were 0.71 and-0.50ms-1, respectively, compared to values of 0.57 and-0.28ms-1 for the smaller zenith angle. Our results confirm that a single Doppler lidar provides reliable wind speed and direction data over heterogeneous but basically flat terrain in different scan configurations. For the virtual tower scanning strategies, we developed a new filtering approach based on a median absolute deviation (MAD) filter combined with a relatively relaxed filtering criterion for the signal-To-noise ratio output by the instrument.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)205-223
Number of pages19
JournalGeoscientific instrumentation, methods and data systems
Volume13
Issue number2
Publication statusPublished - 8 Jul 2024
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85198303688
Mendeley f52c7615-c7c3-30ed-9948-42be01266e9d

Keywords