E-Profile: real-time vertical profiling of wind, aerosols, temperature, and humidity at the European scale

The EUMETNET E-Profile programme collects, processes and disseminates atmospheric profiles of wind, aerosols, clouds, temperature, and humidity. It aims to promote the usability of vertical profiles for operational meteorology and bring support and expertise to data providers and end users. E-Profile offers centralized data processing and extensive quality monitoring for different ground-based remote sensing instrument including radar wind profilers (RWP), automatic lidars and ceilometers (ALC), Doppler wind lidars (DWL), and microwave radiometers (MWR). The current phase (2024-2028) of the programme aims to consolidate the existing networks, improve the data quality, and develop new products.

First, we started processing and distributing DWL measurements in November 2024, providing near real-time wind profiles in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) at a high spatial and temporal resolution. The retrieval uses an open-source code developed at the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) to obtain 10 minutes averaged wind profiles. Currently BUFR messages from 14 instruments are distributed on the Global Telecommunication System (GTS) with a timeliness of around 20 min and data availability over 90% of the time.

Second, the network composed of ground-based microwave radiometers (MWR) for thermodynamic profiling is being setup. Since early 2024, a pilot network is running with a centralized processing which enables the retrieval of temperature profiles and humidity from the MWR brightness temperatures in the K- and V-bands. Operational, near real-time MWR data distribution on the GTS is planned for the second half of 2025.

Finally, following the growing interest to assimilate ALC measurements to improve atmospheric composition models, new developments have been implemented in the centralized processing chain to improve the ALC data quality. This includes an improved calibration scheme and better correction for the overlap on a significant portion of the ALC instruments (over 150 of the 470 instruments currently included in the network).

In this contribution, we present an overview of the E-Profile networks focusing on these new developments, their current status and expected benefits. We highlight the challenges associated with setting up harmonized real-time processing pipelines and discuss the remaining work and improvements.