XPIA

Experimental Measurement Campaign: Planetary boundary layer Instrumentation Assessment - XPIA

1 March 2015 - 20 April 2015

Lead Scientist: Rob Newsom

Observatory: OSC

The Planetary boundary-layer Instrument Assessment eXperiment (XPIA) is a short and highly focused field campaign whose goal is to quantify uncertainties in Doppler lidar measurements of winds and turbulence. The project is being conducted at the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory (BAO) during the month of March 2015 with funding from DOE's office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). Multiple Doppler lidar systems, including scanning and profiling systems from different manufacturers are being deployed in close proximity to the BAO’s heavily instrumented 300-m meteorological tower. Measurements of wind speed, wind direction and velocity variance from well-calibrated sonic anemometers at six levels on the tower will be compared to measurements from the Doppler lidars in order to assess lidar measurement errors. The ARM Doppler lidar that was formerly deployed in Darwin Australia (prior to January 2015) is one of several scanning systems participating in the study. This off-site field campaign represents a unique opportunity for the ARM program to assess the performance of its Doppler lidar against a well-calibrated reference, and to compare its performance against other lidar systems.