Wind profiles measurements and predictions for atmospheric acoustic propagation modeling

This work presents a comprehensive experimental system to measure meteorological conditions with both anemometers and a three-dimensional scanning Doppler LIDAR wind profiler. The LIDAR system captures real-time wind speed gradients at many locations along a particular heading. This work describes a method for extracting a cartesian grid of wind speeds gradients from a range height indicator (RHI) scan pattern. The LIDAR derived wind profiles are compared to logarithmic wind profiles based on single point traditional anemometer measurements. Differences in wind speed profiles observed using the two methods are presented and the implications on long range acoustic propagation modeling are discussed.