Development of a mobile Doppler lidar system for wind and temperature measurements at 30-70 km

- A mobile Doppler lidar system has been developed to measure wind and temperature from 30 km to 70 km.
- Iodine filters are used to stabilize laser frequency and to detect the Doppler shift of signal.
- The lidar system was installed on two designed container trucks.

A mobile Doppler lidar system has been developed to simultaneously measure zonal and meridional winds and temperature from 30 to 70 km. Each of the two zonal and meridional wind subsystems employs a ~15 W power, 532 nm laser and a 1 m diameter telescope. Iodine vapor filters are used to stabilize laser frequency and to detect the Doppler shift of backscattered signal. The integration method is used for temperature measurement. Experiments were carried out using the mobile Doppler lidar in August 2014 at Qinghai, China (91°E, 38°N). The zonal wind was measured from 20 to 70 km at a 3 km spatial resolution and 2 h temporal resolution. The measurement error is about 0.5 m/s at 30 km, and 10 m/s at 70 km. In addition, the temperature was measured from 30 to 70 km at 1 km spatial resolution and 1 h temporal resolution. The temperature measurement error is about 0.4 K at 30 km, and 8.0 K at 70 km. Comparison of the lidar results with the temperature of the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER), the zonal wind of the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Re-search and Applications (MERRA), and radiosonde zonal wind shows good agreement, indicating that the Doppler lidar results are reliable.