The added value of prospective spaceborne Doppler wind lidar for extreme weather events

Lacking an established methodology to test the potential impact of prospective extensions to the meteorological global observing system (GOS) in real atmospheric cases we developed such a method, called Sensitivity Observing System Experiment (SOSE). For example, since the GOS is non uniform it is of interest to investigate complementary observing systems filling its gaps. Unlike full observing system simulation experiments (OSSE), SOSE can be applied to real extreme events that were badly forecast operationally and only requires the simulation of the new instrument. We apply SOSE to the 2nd 1999 Xmas storm "Martin" over Europe and show tat an extended GOS by a tandem of spaceborne Doppler wind lidars would have improved the forecast substantially.