Wind Lidar for Atmospheric Research

Wind lidars use the optical Doppler effect to measure the atmospheric wind with high spatial and temporal resolution. This offers a wide range of applications from aircraft wake vortex detection and characterization to measurement of turbulent quantities like fluxes to resolving small and mesoscale atmospheric flows, and even global wind profiling from space in the future. Principles of wind lidars including two complementary techniques and applications for atmospheric research are discussed.