Abstract

Space-based observations of the tropospheric winds are critical to improving atmospheric forecast and diagnostic modeling. Doppler lidars have been proposed, for some time, to meet the technological challenge of direct and remote measurement of air motion. Being direct, the lidar observations offer the potential for more accurate measurements than those inferred from cloud motion or sea surface roughness. However, accuracy is only one component in the more important issue of representativeness. Sampling density, shot pattern and lateral coverage have merits similar to that of accuracy when addressing the impact of observations on global atmospheric modeling. This presentation will deal with the issue of representativeness or maximum variance reduction as they relate to the dueling concepts of coherent and incoherent Doppler lidars.

© 1995 Optical Society of America