A Land-Based Mobile Wind Lidar for Boundary Layer Wind Measurements: Overview and Recent Analysis and Results

The UVA Mobile Observatory for Winds (UWOW) is a dual purpose mobile Doppler Wind Lidar funded by the Office of Naval Research. The UWOW can take stationary fixed location measurements like other ground-based lidars but, when in a trailer being pulled by a small truck or personal vehicle, it can be operated as it travels along the roads and highways.

The UWOW uses a HALO photonics StreamLine XR lidar and is able to take high resolution wind measurements of the boundary layer. A basic product from the mobile lidar are wind profiles from about 100 m to ~3000 m or more (depending on atmospheric conditions and lidar settings) at ~1km spacing A dedicated GPS/INS provides the data that allows platform motion to be accounted for in the wind retrievals. A generator enables continuous “on the go” operations for ~ 8 hours.

An overview of the UWOW and data products will be presented.

UWOW was recently deployed during June of 2018 as part of the Ozone-Water-Land Environmental Transition Study (OWLETS-2) which was conducted in the upper portion of the Chesapeake Bay with a goal of better understanding and modeling the behavior and transport of ozone and related trace gases across the water land transition zone in the upper portion of the Chesapeake Bay. We will present analysis of the UWOW mobile lidar data taken during two intensive campaign days of OWLETS-2. This will include integrating the UWOW data with other observations (Ceilometer, UAV, Pandora) to detail the boundary layer circulations, particularly the flow structure associated with the bay breezes and the impact of the local/meso-scale dynamics on aerosol and ozone variability. We also hope to present comparisons with other wind measurements (UAVs, sondes, etc.) and, more importantly, with numerical model forecasts of the boundary layer and meso-scale circulations.