Capturing atmospheric events with a high resolution 5km range Doppler wind Lidar

The WINDCUBE200 is a coherent Doppler wind Lidar developed by LEOSPHERE for meteorological and airport hazard monitoring applications. This 5km range wind Lidar is derived from the WINDCUBE7^®, a 200m range Lidar wind profiler devoted to the wind energy market and shows more than two hundred deployments worldwide in the last three years.

The long-range Lidar is used for observing the dynamics of the planetary boundary layer, which contains the main part of aerosols in the lower atmosphere. Due to the 1543nm laser wavelength, the boundary layer height is also automatically emphasized by the instrument. The high range offered by the WINDCUBE200 can also offer cirrus or dusts clouds wind speed and direction measurement.

The instrument's robustness and full transportability, as well as its velocity accuracy (<0.3m/s), range and temporal resolutions of 50m and 10s respectively, make it invaluable for punctual events where rapid deployment measurements in the micro and mesoscale are required.

A striking deployment followed the days of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption on April 14^th, 2010. During this event, the Lidar retrieved 24 hour vertical profile of the three wind components above Orsay (10km from Orly Airport, Paris). These precious data helped to localize the ash plume and forecast its trajectory (See figure below).