Doppler Wind lidars

Doppler Wind lidars#

Warning

Some information here is subject to change. For example, final definitions of configurations (e.g. resolution) might be reformed as data processing progresses.

There are two Doppler wind lidars at BCO – both HALO Photonics (formerly; now Lumi Bird) Streamline instruments.

Both instruments use a laser beam with a wavelength of 1500 nm to measure at an altitude between 50 m and ~1000 m.

Configurations#

Nomenclature of instruments#

Both Doppler lidars at BCO are the same instruments in terms of their specifications (both are commercially produced models of the same kind). Therefore we will simply distinguish them by their order of arrival at BCO.

  • SL01 -> Chronologically first at BCO

    • Level_0 data -> PATH: BARBADOS_CLOUD_OBSERVATORY

  • SL02 -> Chronologically second at BCO

    • Level_0 data -> PATH: ACPC

Deployments#

Instrument

Location (container)

Mode

Duration

Dataset to be made available as

SL01

Testbed

Scan

26.07.2015 – 29.02.2016

BCO.lidar_SL01_c1_v1

SL01

Testbed

Stare

02.03.2016 – 31.10.2019

BCO.lidar_SL01_c2_v1

SL01

WBand

Stare

21.07.2021 – now

BCO.lidar_SL01_c3_v1

SL02

WBand

Stare

18.02.2019 – 05.03.2019

BCO.lidar_SL02_c1_v1

SL02

WBand

Scan

06.03.2019 – 20.07.2021

BCO.lidar_SL02_c2_v1

Notes on the Deployments table#

  • Modes:

    • Scan mode : provides horizontal + vertical winds

    • Stare mode : provides only vertical winds

  • Testbed and WBand containers are roughly 5 m apart and have the same height.

  • SL02 is currently out for repair.

  • The temporal resolution of the vertical wind speed is 1.3 s. (information obtained from Wiki as on 20.03.2023)

  • Horizontal wind speed and direction are averaged over an interval of 2 minutes. (information obtained from Wiki as on 20.03.2023)

  • We decided that the change of location (between two containers 5 m apart) does not warrant the dataset to be provided as being measurements from two deployments, therefore SL01’s stare mode data from both Testbed and WBand containers are provided in the same dataset.

  • The datasets of scan-mode measurements of SL01 and stare-mode measurements of SL02 are kept as low-priority for now.

Raw-data processing#

Warning

Crude description currently, needs to be polished

Raw data goes through some tuning configurations (which has never been changed) to create HPL files, which we call Level-0; but in case needed, the raw data is stored locally in hard-disks.

Zipped HPL files’ size should already be an indication for when switch happened between vertical and scanning; scanning will have small and many files, because direction scan is a file, whereas vertical will create files every hour

Contents