Aspects of Convective Boundary Layer Turbulence Measured by a Dual-Doppler Lidar System

Abstract

Abstract Special designed dual-Doppler setups can be used to retrieve simultaneous measurements of two wind components with high temporal resolution in several heights throughout the atmospheric boundary layer. During a field campaign in summer 2011, different scan strategies were performed to demonstrate the opportunities of obtaining variance profiles of the vertical and horizontal wind components in complex terrain. A simplified error analysis reveals the effects of the error propagation of the uncorrelated noise of the single lidar systems. A comparison shows that the course of the derived horizontal wind component is in accordance to in situ measurements. The dual-Doppler vertical wind velocity reflects the up- and downdrafts in a convective boundary layer and is even able to reflect a light rain event. The normalized profiles of the vertical velocity variances reproduce the well-known decrease from about one-third of the boundary layer height to its top. The horizontal velocity variance did not reveal a systematic behavior on the considered days.