GNSS Radio Occultation in Advanced Numerical Weather Prediction Models

Abstract

GPS-Radio Occultation (GPS-RO), and generally, Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO), is a technique that measures the refractivity of the Earth's atmosphere as a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite listens to the radio signal of a GNSS satellite. As the signal between the two satellites travels through the different levels of the Earth's atmosphere, temperature and water vapor content can be derived at each occultation point, allowing for a new weather dataset to be available to meteorologists. In this article we describe the benefits of large-scale GNSS-Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) as a method of gathering large amounts of extremely accurate atmospheric data that exceptionally contributes to the performance of advanced numerical weather prediction (NWP) models.

Keywords

• Spire
• GNSS Radio Occultation
• smallsats
• cubesats
• LEO
• TEC