The Use of Bending Angle Retrieved By GPS Radio Occultation Technique For The Measurement of The Atmospheric Water Vapour Content
Vespe, F. ; Benedetto, C. ; Pacione, R.
Jan - 2002
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type: Conference Proceedings
Abstract
In the last decade the use of GPS radio occultation technique (GPS RO) has been deeply and widely investigated for retrieving physical and chemical Earth atmospheric parameters. The technique proved to be particularly precise in retrieving temperature profiles with an high vertical resolution (<1 Km). Temperature profiles are obtained for the dry part of the atmosphere solving for a system of 2 equations (the Thayer equation and the equation of state for dry air) in 2 unknown (hydrostatic pressure and temperature). The system cannot be solved for lower troposphere because the water vapour pressu re is not negligible. So we are forced to include some other information such as the humidity computed by the models (ECMWF or NEP) or adding another observable in the system as the zenith troposphere delays estimated by the GPS ground stations. In this work we will investigate the possibility to retrieve humidity using only the bending angles achieved by the GPS RO. In particular, the humidity profiles are extracted differentiating the true bending angle profiles, retrieved by the GPS RO, with the dry ones, obtained by fitting and extrapolating the outer layers bending angles in a dry atmosphere model (exponential or Hopfield). The bending angles will be retrieved by CHAMP and SAC-C GPS RO data. Then the humidity profiles obtained with the proposed technique will be compared and validated with those retrieved with radio-sounding balloons over two sites at different latitudes: Brindisi (Italy) and Singapore (Japan).
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