Abstract

The attempts to use the Doppler lidars for measurement of the dissipation rate of the turbulent kinetic energy ε_T and the wind field structure constant from estimations of mean spectrum width of Doppler signal are discussed in Refs. 1–3. The applicability of this approach is restricted by small sizes of lidar-probing volume. If longitudinal size of sensing volume Δz is comparable or exceeds the outer scale of turbulence L_v this method cannot be used. Thus, the use of the mean-spectrum-width method for lidar restortation of height profiles of dissipation rate ε_T throughout the entire boundary layer of atmosphere is impossible because the condition Δz << L_v can be violated beginning with certain height (range of sounding). We suggest the method of measurement of ε_T based on estimation of turbulent spectrum of wind velocity measured by Doppler lidar, which can be used without restriction on the size of lidar probing volume Δz.

© 1996 Optical Society of America