Doppler Lidar Data Products Released for 3 ARM Campaigns

 
Published: 27 September 2022

Time-height displays show Doppler lidar data from April 14, 2020, during the Cold-Air Outbreaks in the Marine Boundary Experiment (COMBLE). The top plot indicates wind speed (color) and wind vector direction (arrows), and the bottom plot provides vertical velocity.
Time-height displays show Doppler lidar data from April 14, 2020, during the Cold-Air Outbreaks in the Marine Boundary Experiment (COMBLE). The top plot indicates wind speed (color) and wind vector direction (arrows), and the bottom plot provides vertical velocity.

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility operates Doppler lidars around the globe to provide measurements of radial velocity, attenuated aerosol backscatter, and signal-to-noise ratio. Systems are typically operated using a fixed scan schedule.

Doppler lidar data are used to derive horizontal wind and vertical velocity statistics.

The Doppler Lidar Wind value-added product (DLPROF-WIND VAP) calculates profiles of horizontal winds from plan-position-indicator scans that are performed several times per hour. These wind measurements in the atmospheric boundary layer are particularly important for modeling pollutant and aerosol transport.

The Doppler lidar vertical velocity and cloud statistics (DLPROF-WSTATS) VAP produces height- and time-resolved estimates of vertical velocity variance, skewness (asymmetry), and kurtosis from 1-second vertically pointing measurements. This VAP also estimates cloud properties from the vertically pointing measurements, including cloud base height, cloud frequency, cloud-base vertical velocity, and cloud-base updraft fraction. The Doppler lidar depends on scattering from aerosols, and thus, this VAP only produces data below clouds at heights with sufficient aerosol loading.

Both VAPs are available now for the following three field campaigns:

Access the DLPROF-WIND and DLPROF-WSTATS data in the ARM Data Center. (Go here to create an account to download the data.)

More information about the VAPs can be found on the DLPROF-WIND and DLPROF-WSTATS web pages.

For questions about these VAPs, please contact ARM translator Damao Zhang or developer Krista Gaustad.

To cite the DLPROF-WIND data, please use doi:10.5439/1178582. To cite the DLPROF-WSTATS data, please use doi:10.5439/1178583.

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ARM is a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by nine DOE national laboratories.