https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202023701010
Initial Assessment of the Performance of the First Wind Lidar in Space on Aeolus
1 DLR, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany
2 DLR, Remote Sensing Technology Institute, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany
3 DoRIT, Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany
4 University of Applied Sciences, Munich, Germany
5 Ludwig-Maximillians-University, Meteorological Institute, Munich, Germany
6 Optical & Lidar Associates OLA, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
7 Météo-France, CNRM, Toulouse, France
8 ECMWF, Reading, United Kingdom
9 KNMI, de Bilt, The Netherlands
10 ESA-ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
11 ESA-ESRIN, Frascati, Italy
* Email: oliver.reitebuch@dlr.de
Published online: 7 July 2020
Soon after its successful launch in August 2018, the spaceborne wind lidar ALADIN (Atmospheric LAser Doppler INstrument) on-board ESA’s Earth Explorer satellite Aeolus has demonstrated to provide atmospheric wind profiles on a global scale. Being the first ever Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) instrument in space, ALADIN contributes to the improvement in numerical weather prediction (NWP) by measuring one component of the horizontal wind vector. The performance of the ALADIN instrument was assessed by a team from ESA, DLR, industry, and NWP centers during the first months of operation. The current knowledge about the main contributors to the random and systematic errors from the instrument will be discussed. First validation results from an airborne campaign with two wind lidars on-board the DLR Falcon aircraft will be shown.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2020
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
