Edge technique Doppler lidar wind measurements with high vertical resolution

We have developed a Doppler lidar system using the edge technique and have made atmospheric lidar wind measurements. Line-of-sight wind profiles with a vertical resolution of 22 m have a standard deviation of 0.40 m/s for a ten-shot average. Day and night lidar measurements of the vector wind have been made for altitudes from 200 to 2000 m. We validated the lidar measurements by comparing them with independent rawinsonde and pilot balloon measurements of wind speed and direction. Good agreement was obtained. The instrumental noise for these data is 0.11 m/s for a 500-shot average, which is in good agreement with the observed minimum value of the standard deviation for the atmospheric measurements. The average standard deviation over 30 mins varied from 1.16 to 0.25 m/s for day and night, respectively. High spatial and temporal resolution lidar profiles of line-of-sight winds clearly show wind shear and turbulent features at the 1-2-m/s level with a high signal-to-noise ratio and demonstrate the potential of the edge-technique lidar for studying turbulent processes and atmospheric dynamics. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.