This work presents a parametric-solver algorithm for estimating atmospheric stability and friction velocity from floating Doppler wind lidar (FDWL) observations close to the mast of IJmuiden in the North Sea. The focus of the study was two-fold: (i) to examine the sensitivity of the computational algorithm to the retrieved variables and derived stability classes (the latter through confusion-matrix theory), and (ii) to present data screening procedures for FDWLs and fixed reference instrumentation. The performance of the stability estimation algorithm was assessed with reference to wind speed and temperature observations from the mast. A fixed-to-mast Doppler wind lidar (DWL) was also available, which provides a reference for wind-speed observations free from sea-motion perturbations. When comparing FDWL- and mast-derived mean wind speeds, the obtained determination coefficient was as high as that of the fixed-to-mast DWL against the mast (ρ2=0.996) with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.25 m/s. From the 82-day measurement campaign at IJmuiden (10,833 10 min records), the parametric algorithm showed that the atmosphere was neutral (31% of the cases), stable (28%), or near-neutral stable (19%) during most of the campaign. These figures satisfactorily agree with values estimated from the mast measurements (31%, 27%, and 19%, respectively).

This work proposes a new wave-period estimation (L-dB) method based on the power-spectral-density (PSD) estimation of pitch and roll motional time series of a Doppler wind lidar buoy under the assumption of small angles (±22 deg) and slow yaw drifts (1 min), and the neglection of translational motion. We revisit the buoy’s simplified two-degrees-of-freedom (2-DoF) motional model and formulate the PSD associated with the eigenaxis tilt of the lidar buoy, which was modelled as a complex-number random process. From this, we present the L-dB method, which estimates the wave period as the average wavelength associated to the cutoff frequency span at which the spectral components drop off L decibels from the peak level. In the framework of the IJmuiden campaign (North Sea, 29 March–17 June 2015), the L-dB method is compared in reference to most common oceanographic wave-period estimation methods by using a TriaxysTM buoy. Parametric analysis showed good agreement (correlation coefficient, ρ = 0.86, root-mean-square error (RMSE) = 0.46 s, and mean difference, MD = 0.02 s) between the proposed L-dB method and the oceanographic zero-crossing method when the threshold L was set at 8 dB.

This study presents a new method for correcting the six degrees of freedom motion-induced error in ZephIR 300 floating Doppler Wind-LiDAR-derived data, based on a Robust Adaptive Unscented Kalman Filter. The filter takes advantage of the known floating Doppler Wind-LiDAR (FDWL) dynamics, a velocity–azimuth display algorithm, and a wind model describing the LiDAR-retrieved wind vector without motion influence. The filter estimates the corrected wind vector by adapting itself to different atmospheric and motion scenarios, and by estimating the covariance matrices of related noise processes. The measured turbulence intensity by the FDWL (with and without correction) was compared against a reference fixed LiDAR over a 25-day period at “El Pont del Petroli”, Barcelona. After correction, the apparent motion-induced turbulence was greatly reduced, and the statistical indicators showed overall improvement. Thus, the Mean Difference improved from −1.70% (uncorrected) to 0.36% (corrected), the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) improved from 2.01% to 0.86%, and coefficient of determination improved from 0.85 to 0.93.

The standard deviation of the Horizontal Wind Speed as a proxy of wind turbulence is used to compare the apparent wind turbulence measured by an offshore floating Doppler lidar to the one measured by a fixed lidar on a metmast. We use statistical analysis based on clustering the horizontal wind speed measured by the floating lidar as well as buoy angular amplitude and period under the approximation of harmonic motion. Three scenarios with different wave and wind conditions are discussed from the IJmuiden's test campaign (North Sea.).

This study presents a wind retrieval simulator of a floating Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) with 6 Degrees of Freedom (DoF) motion. The simulator considers a continuous-wave conical-scanning floating DWL which retrieves the wind vector from 50