To address the offshore wind energy requirement for data at the heights of modern turbine rotors and fill the gap between existing routine measurements, we analyzed motion-compensated, ship-based Doppler lidar measurements, obtained during previous-year experiments off the US coastal areas. An example of the marine wind flow measurements in the Gulf of Maine during July-August 2004 New England Air Quality Study (NEAQS) will be shown. Presented results include profiles of wind speed and wind direction obtained from the water surface up to several hundred meters with spatial resolution of 10 m and temporal resolution of 15 min. Other analyses will include time series as well as statistics and distributions of quantities such as wind speed, direction, and shear through the blade layer. These analyses show strong spatial and temporal variability to the wind field in the marine boundary layer. Winds near the coast show diurnal behavior, and frequent occurrences of low-level jet structure are evident especially during nocturnal periods. Persistent patterns of spatial variability of the flow field due to coastal irregularities should be of particular concern for wind energy planning, because this affects the representativeness of fixed-location measurements and implies that some areas would be favored for wind energy production, whereas others would not.