Integrating real-time airborne Doppler Lidar wind and aerosol measurements with operational mesoscale and dispersion models

With the intensifying interest in the detection and prediction of airborne contaminates (NBC agents, for instance), the need for high resolution (space and time) wind/aerosol observations and the forecast/transport models that can correctly use these direct measurements for nowcasting and short term prediction also grows. Urban and complex terrain situations are perhaps most challenging to these tasks and have been the target of recent field experiments such as JOINT URBAN 2003.

Traditionally, direct observations of winds can be obtained with tower or tethered balloon mounted anemometers, drift balloons, rawindsondes, dropsondes, and, under special conditions, ground based radars. These methods of wind measurement suffer from one of three limitations: spatial representativeness, rapid deployment and adaptive mobility. The airborne Doppler wind lidar (DWL) can provide wind and aerosol profiles with high space and time resolution (coverage dependent on the aircraft performance), flown to specific targets of interest with dwell options and, unlike the radars, need only aerosols (or molecules in some instances) to provide useful signals.

Under funding from the US Army and NOAA, we have developed prototype software packages used to collect, process and download wind and aerosol profiles obtained with an airborne coherent DWL into a format optimized for use by decision aides and real-time mesoscale and dispersion models in a timely manner. The prototype has been developed where decision making and targeted observations by aircraft are determined by comparisons between actual wind (and aerosol) measurements and model predictions. Examples of field data (airborne DWL) combined with MM5 analysis fields over Monterey, CA will be presented.