Paul Ingmann, Anne Grete Straume, Dulce Lajas and Members of the MAG ESA-ESTEC, EOP-SMA/TEC-EEP P.BOX 299, NL-2200 AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands paul.ingmann@esa.int

The ADM-Aeolus is a space-borne Doppler wind lidar mission focused on the retrieval of accurate wind profiles very much needed to improve NWP, for better initial conditions in weather forecasting by assimilating wind profile measurements, climate modelling, for an improved parameterisation of atmospheric processes in models, and climate analysis. It will help to better understand the atmospheric dynamics, global atmospheric transport and cycling of energy, water, aerosols, chemicals. Wind profiles are derived from the back-scattered laser light (UV 355nm) Doppler-shifted by the movement of scattering aerosols (Mie) and molecules (Rayleigh) along the high spectral resolution lidar line-of-sight. There are additional products expected to be retrieved such as the cloud profile and cloud cover, cloud heights, multi-layer clouds, extinction and cloud optical thickness, and in case of tropospheric aerosols, extinction, optical thickness and stratification.

At the present stage there are preparatory science activities completed and on-going to verify the potential use of ADM-Aeolus products in the context of operational data assimilation in the mid-latitudes and in the tropics and the capability of ADM-Aeolus to measure the optical properties of aerosol and clouds based on end-to-end simulations studies. The global data of aerosol and clouds optical properties generated from ADM-Aeolus are envisaged to be part of a long term data base (2006-2016), along with CALIPSO and EarthCARE, crucial for climate studies.

ADM-Aeolus is implemented as one of ESA's Earth Explorer Core Missions to demonstrate the feasibility and usefulness of wind measurements using the Doppler LIDAR technique. The launch is scheduled for the end of 2008.