GNSS Meteorology and Climatology

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Meteorology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2020) | Viewed by 11746

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Met Office, Exeter, UK
Interests: GNSS; meteorology; climate; severe weather

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sensing of the neutral atmosphere with space-based geodetic techniques is now a well-established field of research and application, primarily thanks to the ever-increasing availability of data from ground-based GNSS networks. GNSSs have not only revolutionized positioning, navigation, and timing, but have also evolved into a robust meteorological system capable of accurately observing the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Priority 1 Essential Climate Variable (ECV), atmospheric water vapor. Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas, and is currently under-sampled in meteorological and climate observing systems. As such, obtaining and exploiting additional high-quality humidity observations from GNSS and other geodetic remote sensing techniques is essential to improve weather forecasting and climate monitoring.

This Special Issue welcomes, but is not limited to, contributions on the following topics:

  • Estimates of the neutral atmospheric state derived from ground-based and space-based geodetic techniques and their application in weather forecasting and climate monitoring.
  • Assessment of real-time tropospheric products for nowcasting and weather forecasting;
  • Analysis of tropospheric parameters derived from low-cost GNSS equipment;
  • Production and application of advanced tropospheric products (multi-GNSS, real-time, gradients, slant delays, tomography);
  • Assessment of reprocessed high-quality tropospheric products for climate monitoring;
  • Multi-instrument retrievals and inter-comparisons of tropospheric parameters;
  • Analysis of tropospheric parameters derived from low-cost GNSS equipment;
  • Production of SAR-based tropospheric parameters and their application to meteorology;
  • Usage of NWP data as an input to GNSS data processing;
  • GNSS-reflectometry for soil moisture and snow depth observations.

Dr. Jonathan Jones
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • GNSS
  • PWV
  • IWV
  • ZTD
  • slant
  • tomography
  • InSAR
  • VLBI
  • radiosonde
  • climate
  • NWP
  • severe weather
  • convection

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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20 pages, 40875 KiB  
Article
Climate Variability of Atmospheric Rivers and Droughts over the West Coast of the United States from 2006 to 2019
by Paul R. Zechiel and Sen Chiao
Atmosphere 2021, 12(2), 201; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12020201 - 3 Feb 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3171
Abstract
Water resources are crucial to the livelihood and sustainability of the general public across the western United States. This study covers the timespan of both the third driest drought in Californian history between 2012 and 2015 as well as the extreme atmospheric river [...] Read more.
Water resources are crucial to the livelihood and sustainability of the general public across the western United States. This study covers the timespan of both the third driest drought in Californian history between 2012 and 2015 as well as the extreme atmospheric river year in 2016–2017. The evaluation of vertical moisture profiles using Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC) Radio Occultation (RO) data, National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Reanalysis of 500 hPa geopotential heights, 1000–500 hPa thickness, Optimum Interpolation (OI) Sea Surface Temperature (SST), NOAA/NDBC buoy data, and NASA, MEaSUREs, Gridded Sea Surface Height Anomalies (SSHA) were performed. The daily COSMIC time evolution from 2006 through 2015 showed a flat to slightly upward trend of both temperature and water vapor profiles through the entirety of the western US drought. Subsequently, a significant increase of temperatures and water vapor were recorded in early 2016 before the extreme Atmospheric River (AR) season of 2016–2017. The quantitative analyses suggest that warmer SST and higher SSHA lead to an increase of heat fluxes from the ocean into the troposphere, which forces thickness changes and thus the position of troughs in the geopotential height field changes afterwards, consequently pushing the trough eastward over the Pacific Northwest and potentially leading to an active AR year in the western US. It appears that regional COSMIC RO moisture profiles, seasonal SST, and SLH anomalies may serve as a precursor for seasonal or sub-seasonal precipitation outlook along the western US. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue GNSS Meteorology and Climatology)
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12 pages, 3165 KiB  
Article
On the Constellation Design of Multi-GNSS Reflectometry Mission Using the Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm
by Yi Han, Jia Luo and Xiaohua Xu
Atmosphere 2019, 10(12), 807; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10120807 - 13 Dec 2019
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3367
Abstract
Due to the great success of the CYclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission, the follow-on GNSS Reflectometry (GNSS-R) missions are being planned. In the perceivable future, signal sources for GNSS-R missions can originate from multiple global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) including Global [...] Read more.
Due to the great success of the CYclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission, the follow-on GNSS Reflectometry (GNSS-R) missions are being planned. In the perceivable future, signal sources for GNSS-R missions can originate from multiple global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) including Global Positioning System (GPS), Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou. On the other hand, to facilitate the operational capability for sensing ocean, land, and ice features globally, multi-satellite low Earth orbit (LEO) constellations with global coverage and high spatio-temporal resolutions should be considered in the design of the follow-on GNSS-R constellation. In the present study, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm was applied to seek the optimal configuration parameters of 2D-lattice flower constellations (2D-LFCs) composed of 8, 24, 60, and 120 satellites, respectively, for global GNSS-R observations, and the fitness function was defined as the length of the time for the percentage coverage of the reflection observations reaches 90% of the globe. The configuration parameters for the optimal constellations are presented, and the performances of the optimal constellations for GNSS-R observations including the visited and the revisited coverages, and the spatial and temporal distributions of the reflections were further compared. Although the results showed that all four optimized constellations could observe GNSS reflections with proper temporal and spatial distributions, we recommend the optimal 24- and 60-satellite 2D-LFCs for future GNSS-R missions, taking into account both the performance and efficiency for the deployment of the GNSS-R missions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue GNSS Meteorology and Climatology)
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Review

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23 pages, 7219 KiB  
Review
Applications of GNSS-RO to Numerical Weather Prediction and Tropical Cyclone Forecast
by Weihua Bai, Nan Deng, Yueqiang Sun, Qifei Du, Junming Xia, Xianyi Wang, Xiangguang Meng, Danyang Zhao, Congliang Liu, Guangyuan Tan, Ziyan Liu and Xiaoxu Liu
Atmosphere 2020, 11(11), 1204; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111204 - 6 Nov 2020
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 4394
Abstract
The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) radio occultation (RO) technique is an atmospheric sounding technique that originated in the 1990s. The data provided by this approach are playing a consistently significant role in atmospheric research and related applications. This paper mainly summarizes the [...] Read more.
The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) radio occultation (RO) technique is an atmospheric sounding technique that originated in the 1990s. The data provided by this approach are playing a consistently significant role in atmospheric research and related applications. This paper mainly summarizes the applications of RO to numerical weather prediction (NWP) generally and specifically for tropical cyclone (TC) forecast and outlines the prospects of the RO technique. With advantages such as high precision and accuracy, high vertical resolution, full-time and all-weather, and global coverage, RO data have made a remarkable contribution to NWP and TC forecasts. While accounting for only 7% of the total observations in European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ (ECMWF’s) assimilation system, RO has the fourth-largest impact on NWP. The greater the amount of RO data, the better the forecast of NWP. In cases of TC forecasts, assimilating RO data from heights below 6 km and from the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) region contributes to the forecasting accuracy of the track and intensity of TCs in different stages. A statistical analysis showed that assimilating RO data can help restore the critical characteristics of TCs, such as the location and intensity of the eye, eyewall, and rain bands. Moreover, a non-local excess phase assimilation operator can be employed to optimize the assimilation results. With denser RO profiles expected in the future, the accuracy of TC forecast can be further improved. Finally, future trends in RO are discussed, including advanced features, such as polarimetric RO, and RO strategies to increase the number of soundings, such as the use of a cube satellite constellation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue GNSS Meteorology and Climatology)
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