Polar winds: Airborne doppler wind lidar missions in the Arctic for atmospheric observations and numerical model comparisons

A description of the campaigns, the DAWN instrument, wind retrieval methods and data processing is provided. During the campaigns, the DAWN instrument faced backscatter sensitivity issues in the low aerosol conditions that were fairly frequent in the 2-6 km altitude range.

However, when DAWN was able to make measurements, comparisons with dropsondes show good agreement and very low bias and supports the use of an airborne Doppler wind lidar such as DAWN that can provide profiles with high velocity precision, similar to 65 m vertical resolution and horizontal spacing as fine as 3-7 km. Case study analyses of a Greenland tip jet, barrier winds and an upper level jet are presented and show how, despite sensitivity issues, DAWN data can be confidently used in diagnostic studies of dynamic features in the Arctic.