A Passive Contribution to a Future Global Wind Monitoring Capability

The 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey lays out goals for an observing system that provides three-dimensional winds in the planetary boundary layer and free troposphere. This ambitious vision will require contributions from different types of observing systems to provide the spatial resolution and global revisit rate needed for an integrated wind observing system to meet science objectives. The Compact Midwave Imaging System (CMIS) is under development as a low-cost, low-size, -weight, and power (SWAP) instrument that will provide radiometrically calibrated, multi-spectral, wide-field-of-view observations of clouds, aerosols, and other atmospheric particulates 24/7 in the shortwave-midwave infrared. CMIS will employ stereo techniques from two satellites (LEO-LEO or LEO-GEO) to derive cloud heights and atmospheric motion vectors that are free of the ambiguities in height assignment and along-track motions that are apparent in current earth-observing missions such as MISR. Due to its wide field of view and potential for flying on a constellation of small satellites, CMIS can complement the coverage of active wind observing systems such as LIDAR, which tend to have much narrower fields of view. In this presentation, an overview of the CMIS instrument design, concept of operations, and system performance will be presented.