Toward an Aeolus Follow-On Mission: Wind-Profile Satellite Observing Requirements and Capabilities

Abstract

The ESA Aeolus mission is the first Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) in space. The satellite’s Atmospheric Laser Doppler Instrument (ALADIN) profiles winds in the lowest 30 km of the atmosphere, beyond the profiles possible from radiosondes, civil aircraft, and land-based profilers—thus serving climate research, initializing numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, and improving the height assignment of feature-tracked Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMV). Aeolus’s molecular backscatter channel provides wind observations with almost full coverage above 12-km height, 70% in the upper troposphere and about 50% at the boundary layer top along the laser track. The DWL also provides important information on the vertical structure of aerosol and clouds. The molecular returns provide the much-needed wind coverage in clear air, particularly in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS), while cloud and particle returns provide complementary wind, cloud, and aerosol information.