Aeolus validation with the DLR airborne Doppler wind lidars: 2-µm heterodyne detection and 355 nm ALADIN Demonstrator

Kurzfassung

In the initial three years of ESA's wind lidar mission, DLR conducted four airborne campaigns to validate Aeolus wind products after its 2018 launch. The DLR Falcon aircraft was equipped with two Doppler wind lidar (DWL) instruments, the ALADIN Airborne Demonstrator (A2D, the prototype of the Aeolus instrument) and a scanning heterodyne detection 2-µm DWL as a reference system. These instruments were operated concurrently over 26,000 km along the Aeolus measurement track. Complementary and synergistic results from both DWLs were used to characterize systematic and random wind errors of the Aeolus products, and to recommend algorithm developments. Recently, this data was applied to validate reprocessed Aeolus wind products (Baseline 16) with the 2019 Iceland and 2021 Cape Verde campaigns, both performed during the FM-B laser mission phase. This contribution offers an overview of the airborne validation campaigns, and ongoing contributions to the Aeolus performance validation and processor evolution.