Abstract

The concept of using a Doppler lidar to measure winds from space was first seriously posed by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Office (DMSP) of the USAF in the late 70's. NOAA, under contract to the USAF, conducted a feasibility study for a lidar system they called WINDSAT (Huffaker et al., 1980, 1984). Their conclusions were that given sufficient power (~ 10-20 J) winds could be measured throughout the troposphere and would provide global profiles of accuracy and density similar to those provided by the U.S. network of rawinsondes. The projected platform requirements and lidar development costs were significant and exceeded the existing resources available to the DMSP.

© 1991 Optical Society of America