Abstract

The importance of global and accurate wind observations for meteorology and climatology has been unanimously recognised by the science community. In response to this need, the European Space Agency (ESA) is involved since the early 90’s in the definition of an European satellite-borne Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) system, aimed at enhancing the validity of numerical weather predictions and. more generally, to improve our knowledge of the atmosphere. Such a DWL instrument is now planned for demonstration in orbit from the International Space Station Alpha, within the forthcoming ESA Earth Explorer Atmospheric Dynamics Mission, in the running study phase of the mission, the original concept based on CO₂ laser technology shall be compared and contrasted with more recent instrument concepts based on solid-state laser technology. In fact, ESA is now considering solid-state DWL’s as valuable alternatives. Definition studies and critical technology developments are currently being carried out on incoherent DWL concepts based on interferometric detection technique and Nd:YAG laser and on a coherent DWL concept based on heterodyne detection and Tm.Ho:YAG laser.

© 1998 IEEE