Vertically-resolved measurements of wind velocity in the middle atmosphere are essential for understanding the global circulation driven by dynamical processes such as gravity and planetary waves interacting with the atmospheric flow. While weather balloon soundings provide regular observations of horizontal wind profiles up to about 30 km altitude, the layer between 30 – 60 km altitude, the so called “radar gap” is poorly covered by observations. The only information on the wind field in this layer available on the regular basis is inferred from horizontal pressure gradients derived from space-borne temperature measurements using geostrophic balance assumption however this does not allow characterizing regional-scale dynamical processes. Here we present Rayleigh-Mie wind lidar, measuring Doppler shift between the emitted and backscattered light by means of a Fabry-Perot interferometer. The wind lidars are deployed at Observatory of Haute-Provence (OHP, Southern France) and at Maido observatory in Reunion Island (tropical Indian Ocean). The instruments are capable of measuring horizontal wind components from the middle troposphere up to 75 km altitude with vertical resolution as high as 100 m and temporal resolution down to 5 minutes. Both lidars have been operated quasi-continuously since 2019 thus providing the first multi-year vertically-resolved time series of wind velocity in the northern midlatitudes and southern tropics. In this study, we present and discuss various scientific applications of the wind lidar observations. We report examples of a weekly and an hourly observation series, reflecting various dynamical events in the middle atmosphere, such as a Sudden Stratospheric Warming events and occurrence of orographic and non-orographic gravity waves. Wind velocity profiles are analysed in conjunction with temperature lidar profiling, radiosoundings, satellite observations as well as meteorological analysis/reanalysis in order to characterize gravity waves and their vertical propagation and filtering. Finally, we present a summary of results of the ESA Aeolus space-borne wind lidar validation using its ground-based predecessor in the frame of a series of dedicated campaigns at both observatories.