Comparison of wind measurements at the Howard University Beltsville Research Campus

The measurement of tropospheric wind is of great importance to numeric weather prediction, air transportation, and wind-generated electricity. Wind lidar technology allows higher temporal measurement of wind profiles with greater spatial localization than the radiosonde. These technologies are compared during a wind measurement campaign in February and March of 2009 at the Howard University Beltsville Research Campus in Beltsville, MD. The instrumentation used in this campaign includes the Goddard Lidar Observatory for Winds (GLOW) (a direct detection Doppler wind lidar), VALIDAR (a coherent Doppler wind lidar), a LEOSPHERE WINDCUBE70 wind lidar, a 915 MHz wind profiler, radiosondes (launched on site and from the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast office in Sterling, VA), and aircraft wind observations reported by the Aircraft Communications and Addressing Reporting System (ACARS), mostly from aircraft taking-off and landing at nearby airports (BWI, DCA, and IAD). Preliminary profile-to-profile comparisons indicate very good agreement between these data sources. Comparison statistics are computed as well and the results of this study show that the wind measurements derived from instrumentation used routinely compare favorably with that from wind lidar technology.