Observing winds at the edge of the ITCZ

How well do we understand wind? Even though wind is an essential component in nearly every weather phenomenon, the representation of the small-scale process (e.g. surface drag, momentum transport, …) in atmospheric models remains uncertain. One way to tackle this problem is to increase the number of wind observations.

From September 27 to October 3, I had the great opportunity to install a Vaisala 200s WindCube lidar from Delft University of Technology at the Barbados Cloud Observatory (managed by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology). This installation will provide a new set of wind observations to help us investigate those small-scale processes.