Patricia Delville

Experimental Validation of Wind Profiling Performed by the Airborne 10-μm Heterodyne Doppler Lidar WIND

The airborne Wind Infrared Doppler Lidar (WIND) has been developed through French‐German cooperation. The system is based on a pulsed 10.6-mm laser transmitter, a heterodyne receiver, and a conical scanning device. To the authors’ knowledge, it is the first airborne Doppler lidar for atmospheric research to retrieve the whole tropospheric wind profile between the ground and the flight level looking downward. The wind vector is measured with the velocity-azimuth display (VAD) technique with a vertical sampling of 250 m. The first flights on board the DLR Falcon 20 aircraft were performed in 1999. Results of a comparison among WIND, radiosondes, windprofiler radar measurements, numerical models, and simulations are presented. It is shown that the correspondence of airborne WIND measurements with those of other instruments or models is better than 1.5 m s21 and 58 for the horizontal wind vector. These results show the excellent capability of conical scanning Doppler lidars to provide unique insights into mesoscale dynamic processes and progress made toward future spaceborne systems.

On the late northward propagation of the West African monsoon in summer 2006 in the region of Niger/Mali

This paper investigates the fine-scale dynamical processes at the origin of the late northward migration of the monsoon flow in summer 2006 in the region of Niger and Mali (onset on 3 July 2006 compared to the climatological onset date, 24 June). Compared to a 28-year climatology, 2006 NCEP-2 reanalyses show evidence of an anomalous pattern during 10 days between 25 June and 3 July 2006, characterized by the African Easterly Jet (AEJ) blowing from the northeast along a narrow northeast/southwest band located over the Hoggar and Air mountains associated with an unusually strong northeasterly harmattan in the lee of the mountains. Using data collected during the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) experiment and mesoscale numerical simulations, this study shows evidence of interaction between the AEJ and the orography supported by the reduced gravity shallow water theory which explains the enhancement of the harmattan downstream of the Hoggar and Air mountains in summer 2006. The enhanced harmattan contributes to move southward the intertropical discontinuity (ITD) defined as the interface between the cool moist southwesterly monsoon flow and the warm dry harmattan. Finally, an interaction between the ITD and African Easterly waves contributes to propagate the ITD southward retreat about 1500 km to the west of the Hoggar and Air mountains.

Four-element receiver for pulsed 10-µm heterodyne Doppler lidar

A four-element photomixer receiver has been tested in a 10-mum heterodyne Doppler lidar. It addresses a reduction of the variance of the power scattered off distributed aerosols targets at ranges as long as 8 km. An improvement in performance is expected when the four independent signals recorded on every single shot are combined. Two summation techniques of the four signals have been implemented: a coherent summation of signal amplitude and an incoherent summation of intensities. A phasing technique for the four signals is proposed. It is based on a more suitable correlation time with discernible self-consistent packets (SCPs). The SCP technique has been successfully tested, and the results obtained with a coherent summation of the four signals, i.e., variance reduction, carrier-to-noise ratio improvement, and velocity accuracy improvement, are in agreement with theory.