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Aeolus (ESA)
AEOLUS+Processes

Photo: NARVAL Mission 2013/14, UHH and MPI-M

Aeolus+Processes

About

In August 2018, the European Space Agency launched the Aeolus mission, the first spaceborne observations of the global wind profiles.
Even though Aeolus was designed as a demonstrator mission, its horizontal line-of-sight (HLOS) winds have been assimilated in all major global numerical weather prediction (NWP) models with positive impact on the forecasts.

The key questions  for scientific exploration of Aeolus are what atmospheric processes and which shortcomings of the NWP models are being improved by Aeolus winds? The fact that Aeolus winds in different NWP models show similar behaviour suggests that the HLOS winds improve the realism of atmospheric dynamics in the initial states (analyses) and in the forecasts.

The "Aeolus+Processes" project addresses three major objectives of the ESA's Aeolus+Innovation program:
1) use of Aeolus data for atmospheric process studies,
2) use of Aeolus wind observations in the next generation of atmospheric reanalysis, and
3) benefits of Aeolus wind observations for the modelling of the middle atmosphere.

In addition, the project investigates data assimilation increments in the tropics from the Aeolus data for the purpose of data assimilation modelling improvements. The effects of Aeolus wind profiles in the tropics will also be compared with the wind-field information derived from observations of the mass-field variables (i.e. the COSMIC2 GNSS-RO observations).

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