Concept of a Dual-Spaceborne Doppler Lidar System for Global Wind Measurement

The scarcity of global wind field data limits the accuracy of numerical weather prediction. The currently operational spaceborne Doppler lidar (the European Space Agency’s Aeolus) measures only a single line-of-sight (LOS) wind component, which leads to discrepancies between the measured results and the real wind field. The systems of the United States and Japan have provided additional LOS wind measurements. Yet residual errors in correcting for the satellite’s own velocity can still degrade the accuracy of the retrieved wind vectors. To enhance the accuracy and timeliness of global wind observations, we propose a dual-spaceborne Doppler lidar wind measurement system. Two satellite orbits with different inclinations each provide a LOS wind; combining these components at each crossover yields the horizontal wind vector. Thereby, within 12 h, the crossovers blanket the globe, yielding a global horizontal wind-vector field. Orbital simulations show that inclinations summing to 180° produce the most uniform crossover-point distribution. As Satellite-1’s inclination (prograde orbit) increases, the latitudinal coverage of crossover points expands accordingly. The preferred configuration is when the two satellites have inclinations of 70° and 110°, respectively. Their ground tracks cover nearly all major global landmasses, with a symmetrical distribution of intersection points and a balanced grid resolution. As satellite technology further matures, this dual-spaceborne approach is expected to supplement global horizontal wind-field data.