Determination of Planetary Boundary Layer Heights From Doppler Wind Lidar Measurements

The purpose of this study is to determine the planetary boundary layer height (PBL) measurements from Doppler wind lidar measurements. Three numerical analysis methods will be tested on the collected Lidar data. First, the peak detection method based on Haar wavelet transform will be directly applied to the range-corrected intensity profiles to detect the peak of wavelet covariance transform as the boundary layer height estimate. The second method, peak-based thresholding method, defines the highest point within the threshold connected to the ground as the boundary layer height from the velocity variance profiles. The third method is called the classic Cluster Analysis, which automatically selects different types of scans for each specific time period of the day based on the range change of the boundary layer height. This algorithm helps improve the accuracy of the boundary layer height measurement. The three numerical analysis methods will be applied to data collected during the Plains Elevated Convection at Night (PECAN) campaign. The results will be compared to PBL heights determined by aerosol elastic lidars, radiosondes and microwave radiometers.