Wind Field Retrievals on Single Doppler Vertical Plane Scans Using Optimal Interpolation

Scanning Doppler lidars can make measurements over large spatial extents using a combination of conical and vertical slice scans.  Since Doppler lidars measure only the projection of the wind along the beam direction called the Line of Sight (LOS) velocity, they require some kind of single or multi-Doppler techniques to determine either the 2-D or 3-D wind field.  Single Doppler wind retrievals techniques which can retrieve the wind field without assumption of horizontal homogeneity can be especially useful to study complex flow.

The Optimal Interpolation (OI) technique (Choukulkar et al. 2012) can provide accurate 2-D wind retrievals over conical scans while preserving the spatial variability information.  In this presentation, modifications made to the OI technique to allow for wind retrievals on vertical plane scans are presented.  The retrievals will be validated against wind measurements from vertically profiling wind lidars as well as sonic anemometer measurements.