The 2013 Chico Lidar Wind Sensing Experiment: Two-component winds above the reach of typical meteorological masts

We operated the Raman-shifted Eye-safe Aerosol Lidar (REAL) and a Doppler lidar at the California State University Chico Farm from May through November of 2013. The Doppler lidar was used to validate wind estimates derived from the REAL images using two motion estimation algorithms: cross-correlaion and wavelet-based optical flow. Validation was performed in two ways. First, the Doppler lidar was located 1.53 km range from the REAL, and it performed high elevation-angle conic scans in order to provide vertical profiles of horizontal winds in a column above the instrument. Doing so enabled us to validate REAL wind estimates at 50, 100, and 150 m AGL through comparison of time-series data. For the second form of validation, we colocated the Doppler lidar with the REAL so that both instruments could perform horizontal sector scans of the same area. This method enabled us to validate the spatial characteristics of the vector fields derived from the REAL data. The experiment is ongoing at the time of this writing. Highlights of preliminary research results will be presented. The Raman-shifted Eye-safe Aerosol Lidar (REAL) at the CSU Chico farm.

View of the Doppler lidar looking SSW across the CSU Chico Farm toward the REAL.