The absence of vertically resolved wind observations over large portions of the globe is a welldocumented shortcoming of the Global Observing System. While AMVs provide very good horizontal coverage of single-level wind observations over most of the globe, one of the most promising paths toward obtaining vertically resolved wind information is a space-based Doppler Wind Lidar. The European Space Agency will launch its ADM/Aeolus DWL technology demonstration mission in 2014, and the US is planning to deploy its first DWL system as one of NASA’s Decadal Survey missions sometime after 2020. The NASA-NOAA Joint Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) system has been used to assess the expected impact on numerical weather prediction skill of various possible configurations of this mission. We report on a series of experiment undertaken with this system in the expected impact on NCEP forecast skill of a hypothetical DWL system was simulated. The experiments show the respective impacts of measuring one or two wind components as well as the impact of increasing the horizontal data coverage.

The absence of vertically resolved wind observations over large portions of the globe is a wellrecognized gap in the Global Observing System. One of the most promising paths toward closing this gap is to deploy one or more space-based Doppler Wind Lidars. The European Space Agency is planning to launch its ADM/Aeolus technology demonstration mission in 2013, and the US is planning to deploy its first DWL as one of NASA’s Decadal Survey missions sometime after 2020. In support of the US mission definition effort, a testcbed has been established under the NASA-NOAA Joint OSSE collaboration to assess the NWP impact of various possible configurations of such a mission. Based on a comprehensive series of OSSEs we show the expected impact on NCEP forecast skill of simulated observations from various configurations of a space-borne hybrid (coherent and direct detections) lidar system. The experiments demonstrate the impacts of measuring one or two wind components, respectively as well as the impact of doubling the amount of data available.