Doppler Wind Lidar

Wind lidars use the optical Doppler effect to measure atmospheric wind with high spatial and temporal resolution. In contrast to scalar quantities, such as temperature or humidity, the atmospheric wind is a vector quantity consisting of three components – usually referred to as vertical wind speed, horizontal wind speed, and the horizontal direction. This requires specific techniques for the measurement of each component, taking into account their different temporal and spatial variability in the atmosphere. Principles of wind lidars, including two complementary techniques using coherent and direct-detection approaches and their application for atmospheric research are discussed. Doppler wind lidars offer a wide range of applications from aircraft wake vortex detection and characterization to the measurement of turbulent quantities to resolving mesoscale atmospheric flows, and even global wind profiling from space with the Aeolus mission launched in August 2018.