The impact of satellite-based Doppler wind lidar measurements on high-impact weather forecasting: A regional OSSE study

The importance of wind observations has been recognized for many years. However, wind observations—especially three dimensional global wind measurements—are very limited. A satellite-based Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) is proposed to measure three-dimensional wind profiles using remote sensing techniques. Assimilating these observations into numerical models is expected to improve the performance of the numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. In order to examine the potential impact of the DWL three-dimensional wind profile observations on the numerical simulation and prediction of high-impact weather systems (such as tropical cyclones, winter storms and frontal systems), a series of observing simulation system experiments (OSSEs) is performed using the advanced research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and its data assimilation systems. Results indicate that assimilating the DWL wind observations into the mesoscale numerical model has significant potentials for improving the high-impact weather forecasting. However, the data impact much depends on the configuration (in terms of the area coverage of the data) and resolution of the DWL measurements. With regional OSSEs, the minimum requirements of DWL observations in terms of their horizontal and vertical resolution and maximum tolerable errors for improving forecasts of the mesoscale high-impact weather systems are assessed.