EPS-Aeolus, Status of the European Doppler Wind Lidar Programme at EUMETSAT
ESA’s Aeolus was launched in August 2018 and demonstrated a long-awaited capability to observe winds directly. The assimilation of Aeolus observations in several global NWP systems brought large improvement in term of forecast error reduction.
In collaboration with ESA, EUMETSAT is now working on a potential follow-on mission named EPS-Aeolus to further fulfil the need for such observations. EPS-Aeolus should be based on a similar design as Aeolus, but at the same time benefits from the lessons learnt during the demonstrator mission. Updated user requirements have been discussed within the Aeolus SAG and with EUMETSAT member states, and have been compiled in an EURD document in 2022. The performance of the potential future mission should be much improved and EPS-Aeolus should provide data that are expected to have some of the largest impact on numerical weather forecast quality.
The progress and current status of the EPS-Aeolus activities will be presented.
