Meeting of the Working Group on Space-Based Lidar Winds: View from NASA Headquarters

1. Meeting of the Working Group on Space-Based Lidar Winds: View from NASA Headquarters Ramesh Kakar Weather Focus Area Leader January 27, 2009

2. Recent Developments • “Tropospheric winds are the number one unmet measurement for improving weather forecasts” • In the last 2-3 years the mission design studies at GSFC have shown viability of the 400 km and 828 km orbit 3-D winds mission concepts with only very reasonable advances in Doppler lidar technology. Also the studies have shown coherent Doppler only needs 0.25 J pulse energy while the technology has (separately) demonstrated 1.2 J, fully conductive cooling, and compact packaging. • The NRC Decadal Survey specifically calls out for space-borne demonstration of 3-D winds but puts this in the third tier of its recommendation • NASA/ESD has spent considerable effort in developing the needed technology, specifications and the theoretical framework

3. Recent Developments NASA has selected seven proposals for funding as a result of the ROSES07 Wind Lidar Science Announcement Two additional proposals were selected by the Airborne Instrument Technology Transfer ROSES07 element The IIP selected two new Wind Lidar proposals in April 2008 ACT and AIST ROSES08 elements also selected one and two proposals respectively that are related to the 3D Wind measurements NASA plans to support a “hurricane genesis” field experiment during the 2010 hurricane season and expects a hybrid wind lidar system to be the primary instrument for this experiment 3

5. ROSES Wind Lidar Science Selections

9. Moving Objects Database Technology for Weather Event Analysis and Tracking Approach Design & implement a Moving Objects Software Library (MOSL), which provides a representation of moving objects, enables the execution of operations on them, and can be integrated into databases. Design & implement a spatial-temporal query language (STQL) which enables users to Comfortably pose ad-hoc queries on weather data like tropical cyclone data Obtain an immediate response Retrieve satellite data based on user queries TRLin = 2 TRLcurrent = 2 PI: Markus Schneider / University of Florida Objective Provide earth scientists with previously unavailable database management, analysis, & query capabilities that will integrate 1) raw satellite data,2) analysis, forecasts & model information, and 3) decision processes to support both the research & understanding of dynamic weather events, & the decision processes related to them. Proposed technology components will be applied to tropical cyclone weather events and observations from QuikSCAT and TRMM to ensure data continuity to the wind and precipitation data from GPM, and the XOVWM, 3D Wind and PATH decadal survey missions. Resulting system will be reusable: mission-independent, weather event-type independent and system-independent Technology components integrated into currently available database systems. DRAFT Key Milestones Application/User requirement study 1st Quarter Data Migration 3rd Quarter Component development Year 1 Integration Year 2 Performance evaluation Year 3 (Assuming April 2009 start) Co-I’s/Partners Ashit Talukder/JPL, Tim Liu/JPL, Shen-Shyang Ho/JPL Draft 21 January 2009

10. End-to-End Design and Objective Evaluation of Sensor Web Modeling and Data Assimilation System Architectures: Phase II Approach Build on previous work on Sensor Web Simulator (SWS). Focus on meteorological applications where information derived from a numerical model is used to intelligently drive data collection for operational weather forecasting. Simulation is essential—the development costs & deployment risk of an operational sensor web system are very high. This lets us: identify types and quantities of sensor assets and their interactions; evaluate alternative observing system implementations; quantify potential development costs; reduce operational deployment risk. TRLcurrent = 4 TRLin = 4 PI: Mike Seablom / GSFC Objective Deliver an end-to-end simulator that will quantitatively assess the scientific value of a fully functional, model-driven sensor web to provide an objective analysis tool for Decadal Survey mission planning. The tool would enable systems engineers and Earth scientists to define and model candidate mission designs and operations concepts and accurately assess their impacts. Tool capabilities will be derived from detailed case studies for a hurricane prediction scenario using simulated data from three of the Decadal Survey missions: - Global Wind Observing Sounder (GWOS “3D Winds”) - Extended Ocean Vector Winds Mission (XOVWM), and - Precipitation and All-weather Temperature & Humidity (PATH) Screenshot of SWS Scenario Design tool DRAFT Key Milestones (Assuming March 2009 start) Co-I’s/Partners Steve Talabac/GSFC, Robert Atlas NOAA, Robert Burns/Northrop Grumman, George Emmitt/Simpson Weather Associates Draft 21 January 2009

15. Summary • Considerable activity related to the measurement of vector wind profiles is ongoing at NASA • The NRC Decadal Survey specifically calls out for space-borne demonstration of 3-D winds but puts this in the third tier of its recommendation • The NASA management is committed to implement the NRC advice strictly along the suggested sequence