Validation of the Aeolus L2B wind product with airborne wind lidar measurements in the polar North Atlantic region and in the tropics

• Published in: Atmospheric Measurement Techniques
• Main Authors: B. Witschas, C. Lemmerz, A. Geiß, O. Lux, U. Marksteiner, S. Rahm, O. Reitebuch, A. Schäfler, F. Weiler
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2022
• Subjects: Environmental engineering; TA170-171; Earthwork. Foundations; TA715-787; Aeolus; Iceland; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-15-7049-2022; https://doaj.org/article/de54ce6bccc2494f9b7e64576b2f63de

During the first 3 years of the European Space Agency's Aeolus mission, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, DLR) performed four airborne campaigns deploying two different Doppler wind lidars (DWL) on board the DLR Falcon aircraft, aiming to validate the quality of the recent Aeolus Level 2B (L2B) wind data product (processor baseline 11 and 12). The first two campaigns, WindVal III (November–December 2018) and AVATAR-E (Aeolus Validation Through Airborne Lidars in Europe, May and June 2019), were conducted in Europe and provided first insights into the data quality at the beginning of the mission phase. The two later campaigns, AVATAR-I (Aeolus Validation Through Airborne Lidars in Iceland) and AVATAR-T (Aeolus Validation Through Airborne Lidars in the Tropics), were performed in regions of particular interest for the Aeolus validation: AVATAR-I was conducted from Keflavik, Iceland, between 9 September and 1 October 2019 to sample the high wind speeds in the vicinity of the polar jet stream; AVATAR-T was carried out from Sal, Cape Verde, between 6 and 28 September 2021 to measure winds in the Saharan dust-laden African easterly jet. Altogether, 10 Aeolus underflights were performed during AVATAR-I and 11 underflights during AVATAR-T, covering about 8000 and 11 000 km along the Aeolus measurement track, respectively. Based on these collocated measurements, statistical comparisons of Aeolus data with the reference lidar (2 µ m DWL) as well as with in situ measurements by the Falcon were performed to determine the systematic and random errors of Rayleigh-clear and Mie-cloudy winds that are contained in the Aeolus L2B product. It is demonstrated that the systematic error almost fulfills the mission requirement of being below 0.7 m s −1 for both Rayleigh-clear and Mie-cloudy winds. The random error is shown to vary between 5.5 and 7.1 m s −1 for Rayleigh-clear winds and is thus larger than specified ( 2.5 m s −1 ), whereas it is close to the specifications for Mie-cloudy winds ( ...