History of Developing a Doppler Wind Lidar for Space1985 -2005

Dr. Wayman E. Baker

Deputy Director, NCEP Central Operations

“WHERE AMERICA’S CLIMATE, WEATHER AND OCEAN PREDICTION SERVICES BEGIN”

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Overview

Pre-LAWS Era (1985 – 1988)

LAWS Era (1989 – 1993)

NPOESS Era (1994 – Present)

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Pre-LAWS (Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder) Era: 1985 – 1988

1985 (July) - First Global Wind Symposium and Workshop Convened

- ~100 environmental scientists and lidar specialists attended and recommended:

- A space-based Doppler wind lidar (DWL) be developed in order to provide data for the investigation of atmospheric phenomena peculiar to data sparse regions as well as data for global weather forecasting,

- An aerosol backscatter survey be conducted,

- A DWL be considered for NASA’s Earth Observing System

- Consideration be given to conducting a coherent CO2 DWL Shuttle mission

1986 (January) – Development of a non-scanning pulsed CO2 Doppler lidar for a shuttle-based technology demonstration (SCALE) was terminated after the explosion of the Shuttle Challenger

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Pre-LAWS (Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder) Era: 1985 – 1988 (Cont.)

1986 - William D. Bonner, Director, National Meteorological Center, stated:

- “. . .the addition of global wind profiles offers the best opportunity for significant improvement in medium and large-scale forecasts. . .wind data will enhance forecasts on all scales.”

1987 (January) - NASA EOS LAWS Instrument Panel Report concluded”

- “The increased use of global wind vector fields in NWP models offers perhaps the greatest potential for increased accuracy in operational forecasts. . .”

- “The gap between our requirements for global wind data and their availability continues to widen.”

- “. . .LAWS will provide. . .significant improvements in NWP. . .[and] improved understanding of atmospheric circulation and dynamics and the biogeochemical and hydrological cycles.”

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LAWS Era: 1989 – 1993

1989 - LAWS designated as an EOS Facility Instrument and the LAWS Science Team established

1989 - First comprehensive GLObal Backscatter Experiment (GLOBE)

1989 - Chanin et al. (Observatorie Haute Provence in France) measured stratospheric winds with a Rayleigh “dual channel” DWL at 532 nm.

1990 (July) - The World Meteorological Organization stated:

- “The proposed LAWS instrument is . . .the only practical possibility for significantly augmenting observations of the three-dimensional wind field . . . We give highest priority to the implementation of an earth observing mission carrying LAWS.”

1990 - Second GLOBE flight series

1990 - First 2-micron wind measurement at NASA/MSFC

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LAWS Era: 1989 – 1993 (Cont.)

1991 (June) - Elbert W. Friday, Director, NWS, stated in a memo to the NESDIS Director:

- “Wind data from LAWS should provide very significant improvements in global analyses which will be critical to future advances in both our understanding of climate and global change and in numerical weather forecasting.”

1991 (October) – Berrien Moore, Chairperson, EOS Payload Panel, stated:

- “LAWS wind data are viewed by the Payload Panel as extremely important for characterizing the three-dimensional tropospheric wind field, calculation of the transport of moisture and trace gases, and developing a cloud climatology, especially in the Southern Hemisphere and over oceans.”

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LAWS Era: 1989 – 1993 (Cont.)

1992 (Approximate) - David Burridge, Director, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, in a letter to Wayman Baker, stated:

- “. . . For many researchers concerned with climate and weather studies, LAWS is the holy grail of instruments. The availability of global or near-global high resolution wind measurements will have a profound impact on our quantitative understanding of atmospheric behavior and therefore on our ability to model the atmosphere. ”

1993 (Approximate) - Ghassem Asrar, NASA EOS Program Scientist, stated:

- “EOS particularly needs. . . important fields that will still be inadequately observed, including wind . . .”

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LAWS Era: 1989 – 1993 (Cont.)

1993 (July/August) – Ron Errico, Data Assimilation Specialist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, stated in the The Earth Observer:

- “Data assimilation using an NWP-type model is critical to the success of EOS. This criticality should not be underestimated. . . In particular, with no wind observing system planned for EOS, process studies will be extremely limited since advection, both horizontally and vertically, is such a dominant mechanism.”

1993 (October) – Pierre Morel, Director, World Climate Research Program (WCRP), in a letter to the NOAA Administrator stated:

- “Given realistic system performances, global wind observations by a LAWS satellite would have an immediate and quite significant impact on global weather analysis and forecasts, and lead to considerable improvement in the determination of derived flux quantities used by the WCRP and climate prediction research.”

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LAWS Era: 1989 – 1993 (Cont.)

1993 (December) - LAWS instrument and Science Team de-selected because of EOS budgetary constraints

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NPOESS Era: 1994 – Present

1994 (January) – Working Group for Space-Based Lidar Winds established

1994 – Wind profiles measured using the edge technique with aerosols at 1064 nm at NASA/GSFC

1994 – First airborne solid-state pulsed lidar measurement of winds at NASA/MSFC (Tm:YAG)

1994 (December) – Francis Cordova, NASA Chief Scientist, stated in a letter:

- “It is clear that global wind observations will provide useful information to virtually every area of earth sciences and, in particular, benefit our Mission to Planet Earth and the Global Change Research Program.”

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NPOESS Era: 1994 – Present(Cont.)

1995 (January) – Robert Sadourny, Atmospheric Dynamics Expert, CNRS, Laboratoire de Meteorologie, stated:

- “After several decades of meteorological observations from space, the wind field still appears as the main missing link in our observing machinery. This has important consequences, not only for numerical weather prediction, but also for our knowledge and monitoring of atmospheric dynamics and climate dynamics.”

1995 (February) – Thomas Tascione, Colonel, USAF Deputy Director of Weather, stated in a letter to Wayman Baker:

- “Acquisition of wind data over data-sparse or data-denied areas could have significant operational military benefits.”

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NPOESS Era: 1994 – Present(Cont.)

1995 (March) – Joseph Cordes, Chairperson, Economics Department, George Washington University, in the Final Report to the NWS on the “Economic Benefits and Costs of Developing and Deploying a Space-Based Wind Lidar,” stated:

- “. . . the estimated ratio of benefits to costs is just over 3 to 1. These results indicate that developing and deploying a wind lidar will provide projected tangible economic benefits well in excess of projected costs. Moreover, the results of the structured sensitivity analysis show that this broad conclusion is relatively unaffected by a fairly wide range of alternative assumptions about the magnitudes of both costs and tangible economic benefits.”

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NPOESS Era: 1994 – Present(Cont.)

1995 (June) – Air Force Report PL-TR-94-1067, stated:

- “Knowledge of future weather conditions has always been an important military need. . . Wind data are used to derive flight and ship route information, icing areas, contrails, wind, turbulence, and temperature forecasts. For the war fighter (the user), wind speed and direction knowledge affects the accuracy of weapons and supply drops and is directly used in mission planning (route, time in route, and fuel required).”

1995 (June) – Excerpt from article published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Baker et al., “Lidar-Measured Winds from Space: A Key Component for Weather and Climate Prediction, Vol. 76, 869 – 888:

- “The first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report assessed prospects for investigating climate change (IPCC 1990). The IPCC recommended that five of the most critical areas for intensive study are 1) control of the greenhouse gases by the earth system; 2) control of radiation by clouds; 3) precipitation and evaporation; 4) ocean transport and storage of heat; and 5) ecosystem processes. Wind data are fundamental to all these calculations.”

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NPOESS Era: 1994 – Present(Cont.)

1995 – First MACAWS flight with a pulsed, CO2 lidar

1996 (January) – NASA New Millennium Program Earth Orbiting Mission, Instrument Technology Workshops, Volume 1: Reports and Summaries:

- “The panel agreed that tropospheric winds are the most significant unmet measurement need in EOS atmospheric science, and a DWL is uniquely capable of meeting the need. Transport is such a dominant mechanism in atmospheric science that the lack of global-scale three-dimensional wind field capability is a major gap.”

1996 (June) – NOAA/Integrated Program Office, Unaccommodated Environmental Data Records: Technology Status and Promising Technological Areas:

- “Direct tropospheric wind measurements would provide a greater impact on numerical weather prediction models than any other new space-based observation.”

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NPOESS Era: 1994 – Present(Cont.)

1997 – Wind profiles measured using the double edge technique with aerosols at 1064 nm at NASA/GSFC

1997 – 2-micron pulsed laser reaches 600 mJ (Ho:Tm:YLF,DP)

1997 (October) – SPARCLE (2- micron Shuttle experiment) selected for a New Millennium Program (NMP) mission (pulsed, HO:Tm:YLF)

1997 (November) – NMP design study initiated for a Shuttle demonstration of direct detection DWL (Zephyr) to co-fly with SPARCLE

1998 (April) – Successful completion of Zephyr PDR and NMP Technical Readiness Review

1998 (July) – Zephyr not selected for implementation on NMP EO-2 due to budgetary constraints

1998 (September) Congressional earmark for a tropospheric wind data buy

1999 First airborne pulsed lidar measured winds with nadir conical scan (CO2)

1999 Molecular double edge wind measurements with the GLOW mobile direct detection lidar at 532 nm at GSFC

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NPOESS Era: 1994 – Present(Cont.)

1999 – Stephen Mango, NPOESS Chief Scientist, NOAA/Integrated Program Office:

- “The value of space-based tropospheric wind profile measurements cannot be overemphasized. At present, tropospheric wind profiles represent the number one unaccommodated data product requirement for the NPOESS program. We believe direct tropospheric wind profile measurements would provide a greater impact on NWP models, and therefore weather forecasting, than any other new space-based measurement.”

1999 – Art Stephenson, MSFC Center Director, in memo to Al Diaz, GSFC Center Director, discussing SPARCLE:

- “As a result of these reviews, we have concluded that while the specifications for the lidar performance are being met or exceeded, the original budget and schedule commitments to achieve this mission cannot be realized.”

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NPOESS Era: 1994 – Present(Cont.)

1999 (July/August) – Ghassem Asrar, NASA Associate Administrator, Office of Earth Science, stated in The Earth Observer:

- “The most important new scientific observation required is tropospheric winds measured with an accuracy in the range of 1 – 3 m/sec, with a resolution of 1 km vertically and 100 km horizontally.”

1999 ( October) – SPARCLE de-selected

2000 (January) – Dan Goldin, NASA Administrator, in an address to the 80 th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society, said:

- “One challenge we haven’t been able to meet just yet is direct atmospheric wind measurements. . . Believe me, we’d love to do tropospheric wind measurements.”

2000 – Lidar intercomparison campaign conducted at Intervale, NH, which included the GroundWinds New Hampshire aerosol and molecular fringe imaging direct detection DWL operating at 532 nm

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NPOESS Era: 1994 – Present(Cont.)

2001 – Global Tropospheric Wind Sounder (GTWS) Data Requirements Workshop held

2001 (September/October) – ISAL & IMDC point design for a GTWS direct detection DWL mission conducted at GSFC

2002 (February) – ISAL & IMDC point design for a GTWS coherent detection DWL lidar mission conducted at GSFC

2002 – NASA’s Laser Risk Reduction Project initiated

2002 – Decision to deploy a direct detection DWL in space via ADM

2002 – Aerosol and molecular fringe imaging direct detection DWL under development for GroundWinds Hawaii

2003 – A 2-micron pulsed laser reaches 1 J (HO:LuLF; DP; double pulsed)

2003 – Decision to demonstrate a fringe imaging DWL in a down-viewing, scanning configuration via BalloonWinds

2003 – First 2-micron DWL flown on the Twin Otter aircraft

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NPOESS Era: 1994 – Present(Cont.)

2005 (February) – NPOESS DWL Mission Definition Team formed to develop a mission concept for a DWL on an NPOESS spacecraft as a P^3I instrument

2005 (April) – Executive Briefing presented to IPO management by Michael Hardesty entitled “NPOESS P^3I Space Demonstration of 3D Wind Observations Using DWL”

2005 (April) – NASA approved the GSFC and LaRC Instrument Incubator Proposals

2005 (May) – Whitepapers entitled “Providing Global Wind Profiles – The Missing Link in Today’s Observing System,” “Improved Weather Prediction, Climate Understanding, and Weather Hazard Mitigation through Global Profiling of Horizontal Winds with a pulsed Doppler Lidar System,” and “ Space-based Doppler Winds LIDAR: A Vital National Need” were submitted to the National Academy of Sciences

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Wind—The Final Frontier

Figure Courtesy of Michael Kavaya, NASA/LaRC