Introduction

Does it make sense to plan using adaptive optics in the next coming hours? What is the improvement in Strehl ratio to be expected?

To answer this question, two parameters have to be known, the distribution of the turbulence along the path, and its rate of change. The strategy chosen to obtain such forecasts requires three steps:
1) Obtain a reliable forecast of the vertical profile of the temperature of the atmosphere several tens of kilometer upwind (Section 4.3).
2) Use this profile to initialize a meso-scale model capable to reflect the effect of the terrain on an unperturbed atmosphere, in particular the triggering of gravity waves or the increase of mixing due to orographic wind shear (Section 4.2).
3) Combine the output of the mesoscale model (vertical profile of turbulence corresponding to the forecasted vertical profile of temperature) with a forecast of the vertical profile of the wind field above the observatory so as to compute the wavefront velocity (Section 4.4).