What was the purpose of Wind Val II?

The objectives for the WindVal II campaign in 2016 were derived from the results, experience and lessons learnt from these last airborne campaigns in 2009 and 2015. The main objectives of WindVal II were:

1. Extend existing datasets of wind observations in dynamically complex scenes, including strong wind shear and varying cloud and/or aerosol conditions.
2. Extend existing datasets on response calibrations over ice and land in nadir-pointing mode.
3. Obtain collocated observations of varying cloud and aerosol load with the DLR Falcon payload (A2D and DLR 2 µm wind lidar) and the HALO and French Falcon payloads (including French aerosol HSRL) taking also ground-based observations into account.
4. Campaign data analysis and delivery of A2D, 2 µm wind lidar and Leandre L2 observations.
5. Delivery of A2D data on L1, ready for ingestion by the Aeolus L2b processor. L1 data should also be suitable to attempt ingestion by Calibration Suite and L2a processors.
6. Demonstration of fast data processing from A2D instrument (readiness for Aeolus CAL/VAL).
7. Provide feedback on measurement strategies and procedures of data collection for future campaigns.
8. Extend lessons learnt from previous campaigns.

What was the outcome of Wind Val II?

The WINDVAL II campaign extended the work and analyses to include airborne measurements over Europe during autumn 2016 with two campaign parts:

• In collaboration with the international North Atlantic Waveguide and Downstream Impact Experiment (NAWDEX) extensive studies were performed dedicated to the above-mentioned objectives. The main focus was on extending existing datasets of wind observations and on response calibrations over ice and land.
• Two dedicated flights were carried out after the NAWDEX field experiment with a focus on obtaining observations of varying cloud and aerosol load.

Download the Wind Val II Final Report

Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.5270/esa-cdzg3lr - WindVal II: "Final Report (FR) Wind Validation II for Aeolus"

The campaign data is available online via FTPS upon submission of a data access request. An active EO Sign In account is required to submit the request.

The data can be downloaded via an FTP client (e.g., FileZilla or WinSCP) using the option "Implicit FTP over TLS".

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