Evaluation of Wind Profiler Data

This report presents the Applied Meteorology Unit's evaluation of a "Hypersodar" wind profiler located on KSC adjacent to tower 412. The sodar data used for this evaluation were collected during two different periods in March 1999 and November 1998. The evaluation is performed by calculating sodar data availability as a function of height, and bias and Root Mean Square (RMS) differences of wind speed and direction between sodar and tower 313 observations at comparable heights. The RMS differences in wind speed and wind direction from sodar wind solution B at KSC range from 0.65 m s (exp. -1) - 2.04 m s (exp. -1) and 4.5 - 32.3 deg., respectively. Note that these RMS differences are not bias-corrected. The vendor claims that the accuracy of the wind measurements from the sodar is better than 0.5 m s (exp -1) in speed and 10 deg. in direction. The results of the evaluation described here suggest that such accuracy may be attainable though the data available for this comparison made it impossible to confirm the vendor's claims. The sodar was not aligned with true north and was separated by a distance of 3.5 km from tower 313 used for comparisons in this study.