The NASA Aerosol Wind Profiler Doppler Wind Lidar, Part II: Airborne Flight Demonstration

Abstract. The NASA Aerosol Wind Profiler (AWP) instrument, described in Part I of this paper, was flown aboard a NASA Gulfstream-3 aircraft during its first two airborne science campaigns based in Hampton, Virginia and central California in September–November 2024. These campaigns were focused on demonstrating how a coherent-detection Doppler wind lidar could address NOAA wind observation requirements, and to observe planetary boundary layer processes to address NASA and U.S. Naval Research Laboratory science objectives in conjunction with High Altitude Lidar Observatory (HALO) differential absorption lidar (DIAL) water vapor and high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) aerosol profiling. AWP observed a wide variety of weather regimes and phenomena with high detail (66–133 m vertical and 0.6–4 km spatial resolution, scan pattern dependent) and precision (.1 m/s bias, 0.89 m/s uncertainty) over nearly 100 hours of data collection. This is Part II of the AWP instrument description and airborne demonstration paper series that highlights wind profile measurements from Fall 2024 campaign flights and quantifies measurement performance with co-located Airborne Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS) dropsonde and NOAA Global Forecast System (GFS) wind profiles.