The application of sea-surface wind detection with doppler lidar in Olympic sailing

The mobile incoherent Doppler lidar (MIDL), which was jointly developed by State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather (LaSW) of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences (CAMS) and Ocean University of China, provided meteorological services during the Olympic sailing events in Qingdao in 2008. In this study, two experiments were performed based on these measurements. First, the capabilities of MIDL detection of sea-surface winds were investigated by comparing its radial velocities with those from a sea buoy. MIDL radial velocity was almost consistent with sea-buoy data; both reflected the changes in wind with time. However, the MIDL data was 0.5 m s−1 lower on average than the sea-buoy data due to differences in detection principle, sample volume, sample interval, spatial and temporal resolution. Second, the wind fields during the Olympic sailing events were calculated using a four-dimensional variation data assimilation (4DVAR) algorithm and were evaluated by comparing them with data from a sea buoy. The results show that the calculations made with the 4DVAR wind retrieval method are able to simulate the fine retrieval of sea-surface wind data—the retrieved wind fields were consistent with those of sea-buoy data. Overall, the correlation coefficient of wind direction was 0.93, and the correlation coefficient of wind speed was 0.70. The distribution of retrieval wind fields was consistent with that of MIDL radial velocity; the root-mean-square error between them had an average of only 1.52 m s−1.