Abstract

The Multi-center Airborne Coherent Atmospheric Wind Sensor (MACAWS) is an airborne scanning pulsed coherent Doppler lidar jointly developed by the lidar remote sensing groups of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), NOAA Environmental Technology Laboratory (ETL), and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). MACAWS will be flown initially in summer 1995 on the NASA DC-8 research aircraft. The concept of two-dimensional wind field measurements with airborne scanning Doppler lidar was demonstrated in 1981 (Bilbro et al. 1984). Substantial improvements to scanner control and pointing accuracy were later made and a modified system reflown in 1984 (Bilbro et al. 1986). Subsequent developments in lidar technology have led to significant improvements in lidar remote sensing capabilities. Several of these advancements have been implemented in MACAWS. The resulting measurement capability is envisioned to benefit study of a broad range of issues in atmospheric dynamics, climate, and hydrology, including the role of sub grid scale processes in large-scale atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs), e.g. WMO (1992), improvement in mesoscale modeling and predictive capabilities, and more realistic simulation of global tropospheric wind measurement with prospective satellite Doppler wind lidar.

© 1995 Optical Society of America