A novel approach for the determination of the height of the tropopause from ground-based GNSS observations

Mendez Astudillo, Jorge, Lau, Lawrence, Tang, Yu-Ting and Moore, Terry (2020) A novel approach for the determination of the height of the tropopause from ground-based GNSS observations. Remote Sensing, 12 (2). p. 293. ISSN 2072-4292

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Abstract

In this paper, we present a new method to calculate the height of the second lapse-rate tropopause (LRT2) using GNSS high-precision data. The use of GNSS data for monitoring the atmosphere is possible because as the radio signals propagate through the troposphere, they are delayed according to the refractive index of the path of the signal. We show that by integrating the vertical profile of the refractive index in the troposphere, we are able to determine the altitude of LTR2. Furthermore, as GNSS data is available from many stations around all latitudes of the globe and make up a network with high spatial and temporal resolution, we can monitor the diurnal cycle of the variables related to the refractive index of the path of the signal. A comparison between the heights of the LRT2 obtained with radiosonde data and with this novel method is presented in the paper, and it shows good agreement. The average difference found is ≤1 km for stations between the latitudes of 30°S and 30°N.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2020 by the authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: Lapse Rate Troposphere (LRT); Zenith Tropospheric Delay (ZTD); GNSS atmospheric monitoring
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham Ningbo China > Faculty of Science and Engineering > Department of Civil Engineering
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12020293
Depositing User: Mendez Astudillo, Jorge
Date Deposited: 28 Feb 2020 03:01
Last Modified: 28 Feb 2020 03:01
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/60013

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