ESA'S Wind Mission Aeolus - Overview, Status and Outlook

Straume-Lindner, Anne Grete; Parrinello, Tommaso; Bismarck, Jonas von; Bley, Sebastian; Wernham, Denny; Kanitz, Thomas; Álvarez, E. González; Fischey, Peggy; Laurentis, Marta De; Fehr, T.; Ehlers, F. E.; Tran, Viet Duc; Krisch, Isabell; Reitebuch, Oliver; Renni, Michael

doi:10.1109/igarss47720.2021.9554007

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 3 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Owing to the continually improved data processing chain, from Baseline 10 with M1-temperature-based bias correction and daily updates of global offset bias removal (Data Innovation and Science Cluster, 2020), the systematic errors of both Rayleigh-clear winds and Mie-cloudy winds are almost within 0.5 m s -1 despite some cases in the polar regions, and the random errors mainly vary between 4 m s -1 and 8 m s -1 for Rayleigh-clear winds and between 2.0 m s -1 and 5 m s -1 for Mie-cloudy winds (Belova et al, 2021;Iwai et al, 2021;Witschas et al, 2022;Zuo et al, 2022). However, what should be noted is that Aeolus has been suffering unexpected signal loss since the launch, probably due to the decreasing emitted laser energy for the FM-A period (August 2018 -June 2019) and/or laser-induced contamination for the FM-B period (July 2019 -September 2022) (Straume-Lindner et al, 2021). The data quality assessment based on the second reprocessed data set (2B11) by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) revealed that the estimated random error of Rayleighclear wind increased by 40% from ~5 m s -1 to ~7 m s -1 during July 2019 -October 2020 due to the gradual signal reduction of DWL, while this instrument issue has less influence on Mie-cloudy winds with estimated random errors remaining at ~3.5 m s -1 (Rennie and Isaksen, 2022).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of Aeolus winds on surface wind forecast over tropical ocean and high latitude regions

Zuo

Hasager

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. To detect global wind profiles and improve numerical weather prediction (NWP), the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Aeolus satellite carrying a space-borne Doppler Wind Lidar in 2018. After the successful launch, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) performed the observing system experiments (OSEs) to evaluate the contribution of Aeolus data to NWP. This study aims to assess the impact of Aeolus wind assimilation in the ECMWF model on surface wind forecast over tropical ocean regions by taking buoy measurements for reference and over high latitude regions by taking weather station data for reference for the year 2020. The assessments were conducted through inter-comparison analysis and triple collocation analysis. The results show that with Aeolus data assimilation, the tropical sea surface wind forecast could be slightly improved at some forecast time steps. The random errors of u (zonal) and v (meridional) wind components from OSEs are within 1 m s-1 with respect to the model resolution. For the high latitude regions, Aeolus can reduce the wind forecast errors in the Northern Hemisphere with forecast extending, particularly during the first half-year of 2020 and during the winter months. For the Southern Hemisphere, the positive impact is mainly found for the u component at most forecast steps during June, July and August. Moreover, compared with the tropical ocean regions and the region > 60° N, the random error of OSEs for the region > 60° S increases significantly to 3 m s-1 with forecast extending. Overall, this study demonstrates the ability of Aeolus winds to improve surface wind forecast over tropical oceans and high latitude regions, which provides valuable information for practical applications with Aeolus data in the future.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of Aeolus winds on surface wind forecast over tropical ocean and high latitude regions

Zuo

Hasager

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, one of the major deficiencies in the Global Observing System is the lack of distributed wind profile measurements, especially over the oceans, in the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere (Stoffelen et al., 2020; World Meteorological Organization, 2020). To begin to fill this gap, in August 2018, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Aeolus satellite that carried a direct‐detection Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) and was able to characterize global wind profiles from near the surface to about 30 km in height (Straume‐Lindner et al., 2021). The satellite followed a sun‐synchronous polar orbit with the descending node at 06:00 local time (LT) and the ascending node at 18:00 LT.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The data quality verification based on observation ( o ) minus model background ( b ) wind, o ‐ b , departures for the second reprocessed data set (2B11—Level 2 Baseline 11) at the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) shows that the global daily average biases are close to zero for both Rayleigh‐clear and Mie‐cloudy winds from June 2019 to October 2020 (Rennie & Isaksen, 2024). However, due to the unexpected signal loss of the Aeolus DWL after the launch (Straume‐Lindner et al., 2021), the estimated random errors determined by the variance of o ‐ b departures and the background error variance for Rayleigh‐clear winds suffered a gradual increase, rising from ∼5 to ∼7 m/s during the study period, which are more than 100% larger than the mission requirement, while Mie‐cloudy winds are rather insensitive to this instrument problem with stable random errors of ∼3.5 m/s (Ingmann & Straume, 2016; Rennie & Isaksen, 2024). The validations worldwide by comparing to wind observations show similar results for the products after baseline 10 with the M1‐temperature‐based bias correction and the daily update of bias removal (Aeolus Data Innovation and Science Cluster, 2020; Belova et al., 2021; Iwai et al., 2021; Ratynski et al., 2023; Witschas et al., 2022; Zuo et al., 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Contribution of Aeolus Wind Observations to ECMWF Sea Surface Wind Forecasts

Zuo,

Stoffelen,

Rennie

et al. 2024

JGR Atmospheres

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aeolus is the first satellite mission focusing on wind profile detection from near the surface to about 30 km in height on a global scale. This study evaluates the contribution of Aeolus winds to sea surface wind forecasts geographically by further analyzing the Observing System Experiments from the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) with scatterometer winds from the meteorological operational satellites (assimilated into the model) and the Haiyang‐2B satellite (not assimilated into the model). The findings indicate that Aeolus has the ability to reduce the root‐mean‐square difference between scatterometer winds and background forecasts (short‐range) by about 0.05%–0.16% on average for climatic regions, except for the meridional wind component in the tropics. Also, Aeolus can generally reduce zonal biases of the background forecasts, while its beneficial impact on meridional biases mainly occurs in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics and tropics. For medium‐range forecast assessments, as the forecast step extends up to day 5, the positive impact of Aeolus on sea surface wind forecasts becomes more evident and is even greater than 3%, especially for extratropical ocean regions in the Southern Hemisphere. Furthermore, the impact of Aeolus shows seasonal variation, with a substantial positive impact from September 2019 to February 2020 and a negative impact mainly in March, April, and May 2020.

show abstract

“…This need motivated the Aeolus mission of the European Space Agency, carrying the first high-spectral-resolution Doppler lidar (HSRL) placed in space, dedicated for wind profile measurements 28 , 29 . Launched in August 2018, Aeolus acquires profiles of the wind on a global scale, filling vast observation gaps particularly over the oceans, poles, tropics, and the Southern Hemisphere, providing homogeneous wind profiling observations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aeolus winds impact on volcanic ash early warning systems for aviation

Amiridis

Kampouri

Gkikas

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Forecasting volcanic ash atmospheric pathways is of utmost importance for aviation. Volcanic ash can interfere with aircraft navigational instruments and can damage engine parts. Early warning systems, activated after volcanic eruptions can alleviate the impacts on aviation by providing forecasts of the volcanic ash plume dispersion. The quality of these short-term forecasts is subject to the accuracy of the meteorological wind fields used for the initialization of regional models. Here, we use wind profiling data from the first high spectral resolution lidar in space, Aeolus, to examine the impact of measured wind fields on regional NWP and subsequent volcanic ash dispersion forecasts, focusing on the case of Etna’s eruption on March 2021. The results from this case study demonstrate a significant improvement of the volcanic ash simulation when using Aeolus-assimilated meteorological fields, with differences in wind speed reaching up to 8 m/s when compared to the control run. When comparing the volcanic ash forecast profiles with downwind surface-based aerosol lidar observations, the modeled field is consistent with the measurements only when Aeolus winds are assimilated. This result clearly demonstrates the potential of Aeolus and highlights the necessity of future wind profiling satellite missions for improving volcanic ash forecasting and hence aviation safety.

show abstract

ESA'S Wind Mission Aeolus - Overview, Status and Outlook

Cited by 9 publications

References 3 publications

The impact of Aeolus winds on surface wind forecast over tropical ocean and high latitude regions

The impact of Aeolus winds on surface wind forecast over tropical ocean and high latitude regions

The Contribution of Aeolus Wind Observations to ECMWF Sea Surface Wind Forecasts

Aeolus winds impact on volcanic ash early warning systems for aviation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About