Abstract

Both single-agency and multi-agency efforts are currently underway to put a Doppler lidar wind sounder into space within the next decade. Justification for this ambitious project rests mainly in the universally recognized need to provide direct measurements of the winds as input to both climate studies and forecast models. Expectations of success are based heavily upon ground-based observations as well as a few airborne observations. While the space-based observations will be taken at 5-10 Hz providing samples with a spatial separation of 50 to 70 kilometers within the earth's atmosphere, both the ground-based and airborne observations have been acquired primarily at 20 to 100 hertz providing a shot density of many samples per square meter resolution. Furthermore, many of the wind velocity estimates derived from these ground-based and airborne instruments have been acquired by using a poly-pulse pair technique involving 20 to sometimes 100 pulses. Currently there is very little in the way of data that is acquired in a single shot mode and processed to achieve resolution, both in space and time, that will approximate that which is achievable with a space-based system.

© 1993 Optical Society of America