The Lidar Department at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics develops and operates ground-based, airborne and spaceborne lidar systems for active remote sensing of important meteorological quantities and atmospheric trace gases for weather and climate research and air traffic safety.

With its lidar systems, the department participates in national and international flight measurement campaigns for atmospheric and climate research and contributes to the investigation of the atmosphere from the ground to the lower thermosphere. A major focus of the Lidar Department's work is the support of ESA's Aeolus mission. Aeolus was successfully launched into space in August 2018 and carries the world's first wind lidar.

DLR supports the operation and data processing of the Aeolus mission as part of the Data Innovation and Science Cluster (DISC). The DISC is a consortium of 10 international partners lead by DLR-IPA. Its activities include e.g. the monitoring of the instrument and data products, the further development of retrieval algorithms and processors, and the impact assessment of Aeolus wind data for numerical weather prediction. The main focus of the open position will be to improve the data quality of wind and aerosol products of Aeolus and a possible follow-on mission.

Within the scope of this research field, your responsibilities will include:

• Improve the data quality of wind and aerosol products from ESA’s Aeolus satellite
  • independent development and refinement of methods for the correction of systematic errors and calibration of Aeolus data products
  • implementation of these methods in scientific prototype processors
  • coordination of reprocessing activities in cooperation with ESA and project partners in the DISC, in particular the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF)    
• Further development of the existing data processing chain L0-L1A-L1B for Phase-F of Aeolus and a possible Aeolus follow-on mission based on E2S simulations
  • simulate realistic and idealized atmospheric scenes using the Aeolus End-to-End Simulator (E2S), process these simulations towards the Level 1B product, and correlate with actual Aeolus observations
  • analyse and resolve inconsistencies between Aeolus E2S and actual in-orbit instrument behaviour by adjusting instrument parameters
  • simulation of the expected performance of the Aeolus follow-on mission by appropriate adjustment of the E2S instrument parameters
  • identification of necessary further developments of the E2S towards E2S2G for the Aeolus follow-up mission