Very short-term forecast of near-coastal flow using scanning lidars

Wind measurements can reduce the uncertainty in the prediction of wind energy production. Today, commercially available scanning lidars can scan the atmosphere up to several kilometres. Here, we use lidar measurements to forecast near-coastal winds with lead times of 5 min. Using Taylor's frozen turbulence hypothesis together with local topographic corrections, we demonstrate that wind speeds at a downstream position can be forecast by using measurements from a scanning lidar performed upstream in a very short-term horizon. The study covers 10 periods characterised by neutral and stable atmospheric conditions. Our methodology shows smaller forecasting errors than those of the persistence method and the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. We discuss the applicability of this forecasting technique with regards to the characteristics of the lidar trajectories, the site-specific conditions and the atmospheric stability.