Background on Aeolus

ADM-Aeolus is the second of ESA’s Earth Explorer core missions. The objective is to provide profiles of high-quality wind observations from the surface to 30 km, using a Doppler wind lidar (DWL) instrument in a near-polar sun-synchronous, dawn-dusk orbit. The wind information is the horizontal line-of-sight component, perpendicular to the satellite track. The mission is intended to have a minimum lifetime of three years.
ECMWF is leading the project to develop (in collaboration with KNMI) the Aeolus Level 2B/C processing software, that is, wind retrieval and data assimilation of Aeolus winds, and to implement the processing within ECMWF as part of the mission ground segment. The L2B wind retrieval algorithms have also been developed over the years in collaboration with Météo-France, DLR and LMD/IPSL.  Aeolus can also provides information on cloud and aerosol optical properties (the L2A product) being a High Spectral Resolution Lidar.  ECMWF has also contributed to a number of data impact studies to assess the potential impact of the Aeolus data. We expect the Aeolus mission to have a positive impact on forecast and analysis quality, in particular for the tropical winds.

The L2B processing software

ECMWF and KNMI are responsible for the development of the ADM-Aeolus wind retrieval software (the Level-2B processor) which produces winds suitable for use in NWP and meteorological research.  The algorithms were described in Tan et al. (Tellus, A, 2008, 60, 2, 191-205), however there have been many improvements since then.

• The ADM-Aeolus Level-2B/C processing documentation (including the Software Release Note, the Algorithm Theoretical Baseline and the Input/Output Data Definitions Interface Control Document) and associated datasets (needed to test the success of the installation) can be freely downloaded from here
• The source code can be downloaded from from our website (upon acceptance of the licence terms) 
• Any news on updates to the software will be provided here
• Technical notes related to the L2B/C processing can be downloaded here