Several recent technological advances have allowed an initial, on-water, test of a buoy-mounted wind profiler to be conducted by ETL and SCRIPPS in March of 2000. The success of this test has motivated a deeper examination of the potential application of such technology in the context of coastal oceanic and atmospheric processes and prediction. Experience with coastal and island-mounted boundary layer wind profilers was gained in recent summer and winter season field experiments on the U.S. West Coast. This experience forms the basis for describing some potential applications of buoy-mounted wind profiling in the coastal zone. These field efforts include ONR's Coastal Meteorology Accelerated Research Initiative in the mid 1990s, and NOAA's CALJET and PACJET winter experiments in 1997/98 and 2001, respectively.

After briefly summarizing the current status of the buoy-profiler technology development and the next engineering hurdles that must be overcome, likely applications in both research and operations will be described in some detail. Several research applications include documenting the diurnal cycle of the vertical wind profile offshore of the coast, developing a climatology of the vertical structure of coastally trapped wind reversals in the summer, and providing temporally continuous observations of marine boundary layer (MBL) depth and wind characteristics offshore for testing of parameterizations used in numerical models. Likely operational forecasting applications will be discussed, including monitoring of MBL depths offshore for summer stratus forecasting, low-level jet observations in winter storms for quantitative precipitation forecasting, offshore melting level detection, timing of frontal passages, and wind information for marine forecasts.

The timing of this meeting is ideal for input from the coastal research and operational communities at this conference to influence the pace and specifics of further development of this promising new technology.