Wind Profiler

The wind profiler is a meteorological measurement system. With the instrument one is to determine the altitude wind between 500 m and 16 km, the virtual temperature up to 4 km in a position to cost-effectively and with high temporal resolution. It functions mainly as a vertically oriented radar.

History of Wind Profiler

Principle of measurement

A pulsed electromagnetic wave is a phased array antenna ( engl: phased-array antenna) emitted into the troposphere. For wind measurement with the DBS method (English Doppler beam swinging ) while at least three different beam directions are used. The electromagnetic waves scattered by inhomogeneities in the refractive index. Change of the phase of the backscattered wave, the Doppler shift and thereby the radial wind velocity can be determined.

The temperature is measured according to the principle of the ' acoustic soundig radio system'. These radiate four large speakers with around 135 dBa sound waves in the atmosphere. The resulting pattern of density fluctuations sensed by the radar wave, the speed of sound is determined as a function of the measured wavelength of a known frequency. The temperature is derived from this via the Laplace relationship.

Benefits of wind profilers

Wind Profiler can probe the atmosphere with high temporal resolution ( every 30 min typically ). Thus, they are cheaper and newer than soundings with balloons. The data can be fitted directly into the weather prediction models and therefore serve a more accurate weather forecast. They are fully automatic and can thus be operated with a small staff