EGU21-1676, updated on 18 Nov 2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1676
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Aeolus: ESA’s wind mission. Status and future challenges

Tommaso Parrinello1, Anne Grete Straume1, Jonas Von Bismark1, Sebastian Bley1, Viet Duc Tran1, Peggy Fisher1, Denny Wernham1, Thomas Kanitz1, Thorsten Fehr1, Marta De Laurentis1, Emilio Alvarez1, Isabell Krish2, Oliver Reithebuch2, and Michael Rennie3
Tommaso Parrinello et al.
  • 1European Space Agency - ESA
  • 2Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt - DLR
  • 3European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts - ECMWF

The European Space Agency (ESA)’s wind mission, Aeolus, was launched on 22 August 2018. It is a member of the ESA Earth Explorer family and its main objective is to demonstrate the potential of Doppler wind Lidars in space for improving weather forecast and to understand the role of atmospheric dynamics in climate variability. Aeolus carries a single instrument called ALADIN: a high sophisticated spectral resolution Doppler wind Lidar which operates at 355 which is the first of its kind to be flown in space.

Aeolus provides profiles of single horizontal line-of-sight winds (primary product) in near-real-time (NRT), and profiles of atmospheric backscatter and extinction. The instrument samples the atmosphere from about 30 km down to the Earth’s surface, or down to optically thick clouds. The required precision of the wind observations is 1-2.5 m/s in the troposphere and 3-5 m/s in the stratosphere while the systematic error requirement be less than 0.7 m/s. The mission spin-off product includes information about aerosol and cloud layers. The satellite flies in a polar dusk/dawn orbit (6 am/pm local time), providing ~16 orbits per 24 hours with an orbit repeat cycle of 7 days. Global scientific payload data acquisition is guaranteed with the combined usage of Svalbard and Troll X-band receiving stations.

After almost three years in orbit and despite performance issues related to its instrument ALADIN, Aeolus has achieved most of its objectives. Positive impact on the weather forecast has been demonstrated by multiple NWP centres world-wide with four European meteorological centres now are assimilating Aeolus winds operationally. Other world-wide meteo centers wull start to assimilate data in 2021. The status of the Aeolus mission will be presented, including overall performance, planned operations and exploitation. Scope of the paper is also to inform about the programmatic highlights and future challenges.

How to cite: Parrinello, T., Straume, A. G., Von Bismark, J., Bley, S., Tran, V. D., Fisher, P., Wernham, D., Kanitz, T., Fehr, T., De Laurentis, M., Alvarez, E., Krish, I., Reithebuch, O., and Rennie, M.: Aeolus: ESA’s wind mission. Status and future challenges, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1676, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1676, 2021.

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