The importance of understanding and monitoring atmospheric physics has increased drastically in recent years due to the anthropogenic impact on climate. One crucial research field is the understanding of wind fields and temperature distributions in the atmosphere to enhance climate models and improve short- to mid-term weather forecast. The lack of homogeneous wind field sampling leads to difficulties in constraining atmospheric models and limits the study of key processes in coupled climate systems. Currently, there is a major data-gap for continuous wind and temperature measurements in altitudes above 5 km. The European EO mission AEOLUS could measure winds up to 25 km and covered nearly the entire globe on a weekly repeat cycle. The data from that mission significantly improved the weather forecast, deepened the understanding of atmospheric key processes, and fueled the desire for ongoing high-resolution wind and temperature profile observations.
The goal of EULIAA is the development of a lidar array, that is capable of autonomously measuring the atmospheric key parameters, e.g. wind and temperature, from 5 km up to 50 km on a 24/7-basis over a long period of time and covering a large observation area. EULIAA’s lidar units are transportable, have a low power consumption and can operate autonomously which allows for measurements at remote regions. The lidar array demonstration is envisioned to consist of two single lidar units. This will yield novel data sets, processed for near real-time implementation into European databases like Copernicus, GEOSS or CEDA that will fill the current data-gaps and help to monitor the effects of climate change and to evaluate the climate protection measures.
To reach this goal, the following objectives are planned:
1. To demonstrate the superior daylight-capability of the individual low-cost and compact lidar system by measuring key parameters for monitoring climate change, e.g. wind, temperature, and aerosols with simultaneous Doppler-Rayleigh and -Mie during daylight at altitudes from 5 to 50 km. The data-gap within this currently inaccessible region of the atmosphere is closed using a novel Doppler-lidar array with multiple fields of view (FOV).
2. The combination of the two individual compact lidar systems with overlapping measurement regions as the first step to a lidar array that is able to cover a large area (> 100 km observation span) and provides five wind-components for each system.
3. To prove the operation in areas facing extreme physical environments by performing measurements at least on four different sites with Polar, Mountain, Mediterranean and near Equatorial environments and from sea- to mountain-level. The deployment to these sites demonstrates the easy deployment due to the compact design (~ 1m³), the low weight (~500 kg), the autonomous 24/7-operation and the low power consumption (~500 W).
4. To improve environmental observation not only by gathering data to fill the gap for continuous atmospheric key parameters > 10 km, but also by integrating them in near-real-time into European databases like Copernicus, making them available for the scientific community and the general public, while promoting the technology with the same measure and making it available to industry by the end of the project.
5. To ensure the sustainability of technological development by elaborating a roadmap to a European lidar array for atmospheric climate monitoring. EULIAA will assess the TRL status of all specific components, identify industrial partners for exploitation, and define the necessary next development steps.
