Analysis of the Temporal and Spatial Variability of the Wet Troposphere at a Local Scale by High-rate PPP Using a Dense GNSS Network

Eugenio Realini, Toshitake Tsuda, Kazutoshi Sato, Masanori Oigawa, Yuya Iwaki

Abstract:	The objective of this work is to study and characterize the temporal and spatial variability of water vapor at a local scale, i.e. less than 10 km, by analyzing wet tropospheric delays estimated by a dense GNSS network. Experiments using high-rate (30 s and 5 s) observations are conducted in order to investigate also the short periodic refractivity fluctuations induced by turbulence, expected to be in the range of minutes to seconds. The effects induced by interpolation errors of satellite clocks with high-rate observations are investigated. The GPS-derived precipitable water vapor (PWV) is validated by comparison with the PWV measured by radiosondes and a radiometer, obtaining differences of about 2 mm in RMS. The distribution of PWV is studied by geostatistics (kriging) and turbulence analyses. Spatial and temporal structure functions are computed for both zenith wet delays and show power-law behaviors varying between 5/3 and 2/3, consistently with the Treuhaft-Lanyi model (i.e. a long baseline approximation for Kolmogorov turbulence theory). Power-law behaviors in temporal structure functions result both for long-term variations, with correlation lengths depending on the weather conditions, and for short-term fluctuations, until about 10 seconds; for shorter time lags the structure functions decorrelate into noise.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 25th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2012) September 17 - 21, 2012 Nashville Convention Center, Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, TN
Pages:	3406 - 3412
Cite this article:	Realini, Eugenio, Tsuda, Toshitake, Sato, Kazutoshi, Oigawa, Masanori, Iwaki, Yuya, "Analysis of the Temporal and Spatial Variability of the Wet Troposphere at a Local Scale by High-rate PPP Using a Dense GNSS Network," Proceedings of the 25th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2012), Nashville, TN, September 2012, pp. 3406-3412.
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