Inter-comparison study of wind measurement between the three-lidar-based virtual tower and four lidars using VAD techniques

The accurate three-dimensional wind field obtained from a Doppler lidar not only helps to comprehend the refined structure of complex airflow but also provides important and valuable solutions for many fields. However, the underlying homogeneity assumption of the typical wind retrieval methods, such as Doppler Beam Swinging (DBS) and Velocity Azimuth Display (VAD) based on a single-lidar, will introduce the measurement uncertainty in complex terrain. In this paper, a new design of a wind measurement campaign involving seven lidars was carried out, which contained the three-lidar-based Virtual Tower (VT) using a time-space synchronization technique and four single-lidars with different elevation angles. This study investigates the performance of VT and VAD measurements under various conditions and evaluates the sensitivity of wind measurement uncertainty of VAD to the horizontal spatial- and probe volume-average effects associated with elevation angles of the laser beam. The inter-comparison results between VT and four VADs show consistent trends with small relative errors under neutral atmospheric conditions with weak wind velocity. Under convective or high Turbulence Intensity (TI) conditions, the relative errors between VT and VAD become larger and more fluctuant. Moreover, it is found that the measurement uncertainty of VAD increases at a given elevation angle with the increasing measurement heights, which is caused by the horizontal homogeneity associated with the conical scanning area. Additionally, the simulated and measured results of four VADs indicate that a larger elevation angle corresponds to a lower measurement uncertainty for a given height.