The latest generation of active and passive ground-based remote sensing instruments, often called “profilers”, has shown its potential for continuous and high-resolution measurements of thermodynamic and kinematic vertical profiles as well as particle-related profiles. It is precisely these observations of the atmospheric boundary layer that are increasingly needed to improve the forecast quality of high-resolution numerical weather prediction (NWP) and nowcasting.
For this purpose, the DWD has initiated the project “Pilotstation” to evaluate options for a qualitative network expansion with suitable surface remote sensing profilers. Currently, we assess the following profilers in a dedicated testbed at Lindenberg Observatory: Doppler lidar, microwave radiometer, water vapor broadband-DIAL, and cloud radar. Furthermore, we plan to evaluate a compact Raman lidar in the future. At DWD, the assessment of candidate systems takes place holistically focusing on all aspects of instrument reliability, operational sustainability, data quality, and on the potential benefit for the NWP using assimilation experiments. This implies efforts to standardize data processing steps and data formats, the development of software tools to support network operations and the proper integration of the observations in the data assimilation system. After the initial testing and evaluation at the Lindenberg Observatory, a suite of instruments will be installed at the weather station in Aachen-Orsbach to enable an end-to-end testing in an operational framework.
We give an overview of the ongoing project and present results regarding the various aspects: operations and sustainability, data quality and assimilation tests for the different testbed instruments and observations. This contribution complements the efforts of network development for future operational use within the frame of the EUMETNET's E-PROFILE observations program and the COST action PROBE.
How to cite: Knist, C., Kayser, M., Löffler, M., Vural, J., Schomburg, A., Görsdorf, U., Lauermann, F., Leinweber, R., Klink, S., and Lehmann, V.: DWD Pilotstation – Evaluating ground-based remote sensing systems for future observing networks, EMS Annual Meeting 2022, Bonn, Germany, 5–9 Sep 2022, EMS2022-119, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2022-119, 2022.
