Two years of continuous Doppler lidar observations at Cabo Verde: Validation of Aeolus wind products

Joshua Walchester; Holger Baars; Athena A. Floutsi; Dimitri Trapon; Dietrich Althausen; Ronny Engelmann; Annett Skupin; Martin Radenz; Johannes Bühl; Andi Klamt; Ulla Wandinger; Eder Silva; Elizandro Rodrigues; Pericles Silva; Cordula Zenk; Eleni Marinou; Peristera Paschou

doi:10.1051/epjconf/202636211004

Open Access

Issue		EPJ Web Conf. Volume 362, 2026 31^st International Laser Radar Conference (ILRC 31) Held Together with the 22^nd Coherent Laser Radar Conference (CLRC 22)


Article Number		11004
Number of page(s)		4
Section		Joint CLRC/ILRC Session: Airborne and Spaceborne Wind Lidar Missions (Aeolus etc.)
DOI		https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202636211004
Published online		09 April 2026

EPJ Web of Conferences 362, 11004 (2026)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202636211004

Two years of continuous Doppler lidar observations at Cabo Verde: Validation of Aeolus wind products

Joshua Walchester^(a), Holger Baars^(a), Athena A. Floutsi^(a), Dimitri Trapon^(a), Dietrich Althausen^(a), Ronny Engelmann^(a), Annett Skupin^(a), Martin Radenz^(a), Johannes Bühl^(a), Andi Klamt^(a), Ulla Wandinger^(a), Eder Silva^(b), Elizandro Rodrigues^(b), Pericles Silva^(b), Cordula Zenk^(b)^,(c), Eleni Marinou^(d) and Peristera Paschou^(d)

^(a) Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research, Leipzig, Germany
^(b) Ocean Science Centre Mindelo, Cabo Verde
^(c) GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany
^(d) National Observatory of Athens (NOA), Greece; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Published online: 9 April 2026

Abstract

In the framework of the Joint Aeolus Tropical Atlantic Campaign (JATAC), a scanning HALO photonics Doppler lidar has been deployed at Mindelo, Cabo Verde, since 2021 to study atmospheric dynamics and to validate the wind products of the Aeolus mission.

The ground-based Doppler lidar was usually operating in stare mode (vertical profiling), but each 15 minutes a plan position indicator (PPI) scan was performed to derive vertical profiles of the horizontal wind speed and direction. Due to the vicinity of the measurement site in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean west of arid Africa, aerosol from the ground up to 4-7 km can be observed year-round, allowing to retrieve wind profiles up to this altitude.

We used these profiles to validate the Aeolus L2B wind products from the direct overpasses at the site each Friday from June 2021 to April 2023 (end of Aeolus operations). The evaluation of the operational Aeolus wind products (Baseline 12 to 16) in the time period from July 2021 to April 2023 revealed a systematic error of 0.09 (0.88) m/s and a random error of 7 (3.5) m/s for the Rayleigh (Mie) products.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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