Validation of Aeolus L2B products over the tropical Atlantic using radiosondes

Abstract. Since its launch by the European Space Agency in 2018, the Aeolus satellite has been using the first Doppler wind lidar in space to acquire three-dimensional atmospheric wind profiles around the globe. Especially in the tropics, these measurements compensate for the currently limited number of other wind observations, making an assessment of the quality of Aeolus wind products in this region crucial for numerical weather prediction. To evaluate the quality of the Aeolus L2B wind products across the tropical Atlantic Ocean, 20 radiosondes corresponding to Aeolus overpasses were launched from the islands of Sal, Saint Croix and Puerto Rico during August–September 2021 as part of the Joint Aeolus Tropical Atlantic Campaign. During this period, Aeolus sampled winds within a complex environment with a variety of cloud types in the vicinity of the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone and aerosol particles from Saharan dust outbreaks. On average, the validation for Aeolus Raleigh-clear revealed a random error of 3.8–4.3 ms⁻¹ between 2–16 km and 4.3–4.8 ms⁻¹ between 16–20 km, with a systematic error of −0.5 ± 0.2 ms⁻¹. For Mie-cloudy, the random error between 2–16 km is 1.1–2.3 ms⁻¹ and the systematic error is -0.9 ± 0.3 ms⁻¹. Below clouds or within dust layers, the quality of Rayleigh-clear measurements can be degraded when the useful signal is reduced. In these conditions, we also noticed an underestimation of the L2B estimated error. Gross outliers which we define with large deviations from the radiosonde but low error estimates account for less than 5 % of the data. These outliers appear at all altitudes and under all environmental conditions; however, their root-cause remains unknown. Finally, we confirm the presence of an orbital-dependent bias of up to 2.5 ms⁻¹ observed with both radiosondes and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts model equivalents. The results of this study contribute to a better characterization of the Aeolus wind product in different atmospheric conditions and provide valuable information for further improvement of the wind retrieval algorithm.