Future Doppler lidar wind measurement from space in Japan

Wind profile is fundamental in many atmospheric phenomena. Radiosonde, windprofiler, and Doppler lidar, have been developed for the wind measurement. Radiosonde and windprofiler are used to obtain wind profiles. About 1,300 weather stations launch radiosondes to obtain profiles of pressure, wind, temperature, and humidity. Most of the weather stations are on land, while the stations on the sea are very sparse. Spaceborne visible and infrared imagers and microwave scatterometers can obtain wind data only at a specific altitude. Current wind observations are not enough and their reliability in the global climate model and weather prediction must be improved. Many scientific groups anticipate the realization of a global observation system for three-dimensional wind measurements. The spaceborne Doppler lidar is regarded as one of the candidate sensors for the global wind measurements. The working group on Japanese spaceborne Doppler Lidar has been established to realize for wind measurements from space. In this paper, we describe the activities and goals of this working group.