• Understanding turbulent motions within the boundary layer

• Wind power forecasting research programs

• All clear: Introducing the 2nd generation Lidar for air traffic applications

• Characterizing aerosols during the HYMEX campaign

No11

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January2013

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Turbulence is an important process that redistributes energy and mass within the boundary layer. However, due to model resolution, turbulent processes are typically parameterized in most atmospheric numerical models, and thus datasets are needed to understand what factors affect turbulence.

Many different characteristics can impact the character of turbulence in the boundary layer, including different surface types, horizontal wind speed and direction, and the vertical temperature structure of the atmosphere. However, there have been few studies that have investigated how the vertical turbulence profile changes over short horizontal distances.

Scientists from the University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology and NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory conducted the Lower Atmospheric Boundary Layer Experiment (LABLE) from 18 September to 13 November 2012 to characterize the turbulent

motions of the atmosphere under different conditions (e.g., day/night, wind direction / speed, etc).

They deployed several additional instruments at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains Central Facility in north-central Oklahoma, where the land use and sur face condit ions are qui te var iable . The LEOSPHERE WINDCUBE®200 Doppler lidar was one of the several instruments deployed at the ARM site for LABLE. The LEOSPHERE lidar was sited next to the ARM water vapor Raman lidar (Fig 1) to collect a co-located vertical motion – water vapor dataset.

The data from these two lidars, along with other instruments deployed during LABLE, sampled a wide range of conditions including several cold front passages (e.g., Fig 2), periods with both surface-driven and cloud- driven boundary layer turbulence, convectively driven daytime boundary layers, and more.

LIDAR WATCH

Understanding turbulent motions within the boundary layer

W i n d p o w e r f o r e c a s t i n g r e s e a r c h p r o g r a m sAWS Truepower (AWST), a leading renewable energy consultancy firm conducts numerous wind energy research efforts for using numerical prediction models and remote sensors to advance state-of-the-art wind power forecasting techniques. Two of those research programs incorporate the use of WINDCUBE® Lidars.

The first program, the Wind Forecasting Improvement Project (WFIP) is a multi-year U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)/National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sponsored study whose main purpose is to demonstrate the scientific and economic benefits of additional atmospheric observations and model enhancements on wind energy production forecasts. WFIPemploys additional measurement tools including remote sensing instrumentation such as Lidars to help improve forecast model performance. The choice of using Lidar vertical profilers is driven by their unique capability to measure accurately the wind speed and the wind direction at multiple levels through and above the rotor plane. In WFIP, two WINDCUBE®8 have been deployed immediately upstream and downstream of a wind farm to detect Low Level Jets (LLJ) which typically occur at altitudes between 100 and 500 meters.

LLJs can cause large ramp events (excursions of power production over short time spans) at wind farms; thus accurate forecasts of these phenomena are important for utility and grid system operators.

The data collected by the WINDCUBE®8 are currently being used to quantify improvements in AWST forecasting model accuracy and examine the development, maintenance, and decay of LLJs.

The second program, the Solar and Wind Integrated Forecasting Technology (SWIFT), is sponsored by the Hawaiian Electric Companies and aims at improving operational forecasting for both wind and wind facilities for the Hawaiian Islands. SWIFT efforts continues the WindNET initiatives to improve short-term wind ramp event forecasting as part of a US DOE ARRA funded initiative. SWIFT incorporates state-of-the-art numerical weather prediction techniques combined with deployment of a network of

remote sensing instruments to create an operational forecasting system for wind and solar environment customized for Hawaii’s complex terrain, climate and utility operating environment. A scanning Lidar, the WINDCUBE®100S, has been

field sited and will be deployed late 2012/early 2013 as part of the remote sensing network to provide upstream atmospheric information to improve short-term and ramp event forecasting capability.

“The WFIP and SWIFT work performed by AWST, in collaboration with the U.S. DOE, NOAA, and Hawaiian Electric Companies, and other partners such as Leosphere, demonstrates the unique value of remote sensing instrumentation, including Lidar, in improving wind power forecasting” states Jeff Freedman, Lead Research Scientist at AWST.

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Figure 2: Cold front passages detected thanks to the two deployed Lidars

Guest author: David D. Turner, Physical Scientist, National Severe Storms Laboratory / NOAA

Figure 1: LEOSPHERE Lidar WINDCUBE ®200 sited next to the ARM water vapor Raman lidar

American Meteorological Society (AMS) Austin - USA

6th to 10th JANUARY 2013

EGUVienna - AUSTRIA

7th to 12th APRIL 2013

ATC GLOBALAmsterdam - NETHERLANDS

12th to 14th MARCH 2013

Meet Us

Understanding turbulent motions within the boundary layer All Clear: Introducing the 2nd generation Lidar for air traffic application

In the framework of the SESAR activities led by

Thales Air System, and after the sucess of the

first campaign XP0, the lidar WINDCUBE®200S

has been deployed for the second test trial, , in

Autumn 2012 at Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport.

The lidar was able to monitor wake vortices in

real time thanks to a post-processing developed

with ONERA, the French aerospace agency.

The wake vortices have been detected

up to a distance of 800m (upwards or

sideways), which could only be possible

thanks to an extremely high spatial (5m)

and time resolution (3s per vertical scan).

The realtime and reliable monitoring of wake vortices behavior close to the ground has shown that these phenomenons are very hard to predict and modelize. Hence in the context of building a Wake Vortex Advisory System (WVAS), Lidar based sensors are crucial for safely optimizing runway capacity.

WINDCUBE 400S-ATThe 2nd generation of 3D Wind Doppler LIDAR for wind sheardetection and unambiguous air traffic decision.

= Real time detection of wind shears and wake to 10 km in the glide slope

= Automatic METAR generation with Rainbow® 5 software

= 2nd generation full fiber optics wind 3D LIDAR

= Low equipment and maintenance cost

WIND HAZARDS WAKE VORTICES WIND SHEARS

All Clear

www.leosphere.com

W I N D D O P P L E R L I D A R

Guest author: David D. Turner, Physical Scientist, National Severe Storms Laboratory / NOAA

To meet the global rising passenger and freight demand, air traffic is expected to double by 2025, requiring not only new airport infrastructure, but also new investment in air traffic control system that will enable to optimize this increased airport capacity without compromising on safety.

For more than 2 years LEOSPHERE has actively participated into global air traffic management optimization programs like SESAR. This has clearly shown the interest of using the now mature WINDCUBE Lidar technology to complement the already existing array of sensors such as radars to obtain real time accurate and highly resolved wind hazard information. This is crucial for securing and optimizing traffic during final approach.

Reliable wind shear alerting system in the glide slope is a major Air Traffic Management challenge that LEOSPHERE is addressing with the release of a second generation of long range scanning Lidar dedicated to air traffic application: the WINDCUBE®400S-AT. This new Lidar product is synthetizing height years experience in proven Lidar reliability and performance, while offering groundbreaking new benefits for airport operation.

The WINDCUBE®400S-AT is a robust and low maintenance scanning Lidar system that is able to measure and detect

wind-shear phenomenons at a 10km range.Coupled with the leading severe weather monitoring software Rainbow® 5 from Selex Gematronik, it can be fully integrated to existing Air Traffic Management systems and is able to send real time wind shear alerts to airport controllers for unambiguous traffic decision. Thanks to the powerful WINDFORGE Lidar control software and its fast scan capabilities, the WINDCUBE®400S-AT can be configured to monitor hazards in the glide slope and/or in wider areas depending on the topography or specific climate conditions that are prone to microburst or wind shear phenomenons.

These hazards are particularly dangerous to aircraft during the landing and take-off phases, due to their unpredictability and brief occurrence (few minutes). They require constant and real time monitoring as they can happen in all weather conditions (clear sky or during precipitation); The WINDCUBE®400S-AT is a natural complement to traditional Radar technology that could be less performant in clear weather condition.

LEOSPHERE is proud to contribute to technological innovation to this market segment, by the introduction of new products such as the WINDCUBE®400S-AT and its participation in major international efforts for the improvement airport traffic management. Stay tuned for more updates!

In Autumn 2012, an intensive period of measurements took place in the framework of the European project HYMEX (Hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean experiment). A huge number of sensors have been deployed as well as one aerosol Lidar R-MAN®510 developed by LEOSPHERE, which obtained very good results.

R-MAN®510 has three channels: two elastic channels in UV with two different cross - polarizations and one nitrogen Raman channel. The combination of these three channels allow to clearly identify the structures of clouds and aerosols from near ground up to 20 km, to get calibrated optical properties like extinction and backscatter coefficients or aerosol optical depth.

One R-MAN®510 was deployed first in Barcelona and then in Minorca for 2 months in order to be compared to other Lidars and sun photometers. The comparison of the R-MAN®510 m e a s u r e m e n t s with both the Lidar of UPC (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) in Barcelona and the one of CEA-CNRS/LSCE in Minorca showed good

agreement between the commercial Lidar and the research Lidars. Automatical optical depth retrieval is in very good agreement with the AERONET sun photometer within 5%.

Thanks to the measurements of the aerosol Lidar, particles monitoring into the troposphere have been realized. In Minorca, several events of saharian dusts have been observed. An extreme dust event has been observed with

dust layers up to 5 km (figure 2). Additional analysis will be realized in the coming months to explain this kind of event.Eventually, a mask visualization is automatically created in the post-processing chain of the R-MAN®510. Thanks to depolarization ratio and Lidar ratio obtained by the Raman channel, the different layers of aerosols are classified.

The mask allows to easily distinguish the type of the different layers observed in the troposphere. For the example below (Figure3), several layers of Saharan dust have been observed between 1 and 4 km on the mask of aerosol and cloud for one day of measurements as well as two different clouds during the evening.

The R-MAN®510 is filling a gap in the ceilometers and Lidars family by bringing high fidelity measurements (high range, low overlap, high accuracy, auto-calibration) for operational and networking uses.

www.leosphere.com

Characterizing aerosols during the HYMEX campaign

LIDAR WATCH

Figure 2: An extreme dust event observed with dust layers up to 5 km

Figure 3 One-day measurement during the HYMEX campaign with the R-MAN510

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Figure 1: One R-MAN 510 deployed in Barcelona (UPC)

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