Exploiting existing ground-based remote sensing networks to improve high-resolution weather forecasts

A recent Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) action financed by the European Union, European Ground-Based Observations of Essential Variables for Climate and Operational Meteorology (EG-CLIMET) is reported. The final report identified four ground-based profiling instruments that are currently underexploited and that have the potential to provide profiles of aerosol and cloud backscatter, winds, temperature, and humidity in real time. These include automatic lidars and ceilometers (ALCs), Doppler lidars, wind profilers, and microwave radiometers. Low-power and sensitive ALCs transmit a short pulse of laser radiation, with wavelengths ranging from 355 to 1064 nm, and receive a backscattered signal with a delay that provides range information. Doppler lidars have the ability to continuously monitor the wind vector throughout the boundary layer using the return from aerosol particles and that the instruments can operate unmanned with minimal maintenance. The precise estimation of Doppler frequencies is performed through heterodyning followed by spectral estimation methods and only requires sufficiently stable radio frequency (RF) oscillators.