An Optical Autocovariance Lidar for aerosol transport studies

Planned decadal survey missions ACE and 3D-Winds hold promise to provide global observations of range-resolved aerosol and wind profiles. Such observations are needed to improve weather and air-quality forecast research, particularly in data-starved regions over the oceans, southern hemisphere, and the tropics. In recent ground-validation and high-altitude aircraft flight tests funded by the NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) the Ball Aerospace-developed Optical Autocovariance Wind Lidar (OAWL) instrument was shown to successfully measure winds from aerosol backscatter. Due to the flexible design of OAWL, the system can operate at multiple simultaneous wavelengths, enabling the combination of wind measurements with high spectral resolution (HSRL) measurements for atmospheric flux studies. With additional components being developed under the Advanced Component Technology (ACT) program and new algorithms applied to the OAWL data, we will demonstrate the ability to make the HSRL+wind measurements for aerosol and pollution transport studies. We will present an overview of the OAWL system, a summary of the test results and aerosol products, and will briefly discuss options for a space-based version of the system, recently vetted by an ESTO funded Goddard Instrument Design Lab study.