Doppler Radar Measurements of Spatial Turbulence Intensity in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Remote sensing instruments that scan have the ability to provide high-resolution spatial measurements of atmospheric boundary layer winds across a region. However, the time required to collect the volume of measurements used to produce this spatial representation of atmospheric winds typically limits the extraction of atmospheric turbulence information using traditional temporal analysis techniques. To overcome this constraint, a spatial turbulence intensity (STI) metric was developed to quantify atmospheric turbulence intensity (TI) through analysis of spatial wind field variability. The methods used to determine STI can be applied throughout the measurement domain to transform the spatially distributed velocity fields to analogous measurement maps of STI. This method enables a comprehensive spatial characterization of atmospheric TI. STI efficacy was examined across a range of wind speeds and atmospheric stability regimes using both single- and dual-Doppler measurements. STI demonstrated the ability to capture rapid fluctuations in TI and was able to discern large-scale TI trends consistent with the early evening transition. The ability to spatially depict atmospheric TI could benefit a variety of research disciplines such as the wind energy industry, where an understanding of wind plant complex flow spatiotemporal variability is limited.