Title: The OAWL instrument: a direct-detection aerosol wind lidar for airborne and space-based wind profiles
Presenting Author: Sara Tucker
Organization: Ball Aerospace
Co-Author(s): Mike Hardesty, Sunil Baidar, CIRES/CU-Boulder and NOAA ESRL John Marquardt, Carl Weimer, Ball Aerospace

Abstract:
To better forecast winds, numerical weather prediction models need better model initialization wind data over the whole globe, especially over the oceans, southern hemisphere, and the Tropics. The need for these observations increases as weather forecast models increase in their resolution and complexity. Ball Aerospace has been working to help address this need for several years, most recently through two Optical Autocovariance Wind Lidar (OAWL) -based programs. The HAWC-OAWL (HSRL for Aerosols Winds and Clouds using OAWL) Instrument Incubator Program started with the plan of building a dual wavelength and dual-look version of OAWL with HSRL capability. In 2015, ATHENA-OAWL Venture Technology funding was awarded to get a two-look, two-laser, 532 nm version of OAWL (the Green OAWL or “GrOAWL”) built, flown in an aircraft, and validated (using dropsondes) by summer 2016 to be an airborne demonstrator for the ATHENA-OAWL Earth Venture Instrument mission concept. The HAWC-OAWL program was thus modified to include the build and test of a new dual-wavelength athermal interferometer and to reconfigure the WB-57 aircraft version of OAWL to fly on the NASA DC-8 with both 355 nm and 532 nm wavelengths for winds and depolarization measurements. We will present a brief overview of the GrOAWL and HAWC-OAWL instruments, review the AOVT validation results, provide an update on the airborne system status for future operation, and provide a roadmap for implementing a wind lidar demonstration mission like the ATHENA-OAWL mission.