Water vapour tomography using GPS phase observations: Results from the ESCOMPTE experiment

Abstract

Global Positioning System (GPS) tomography is a technique for estimating the 3-D structure of the atmospheric water vapour using data from a dense local network of GPS receivers. Several current methods utilize estimates of slant wet delays between the GPS satellites and the receivers on the ground, which are difficult to obtain with millimetre accuracy from the GPS observations. We present results of applying a new tomographic method to GPS data from the Expériance sur site pour contraindre les modéles de pollution atmosphérique et de transport d’emissions (ESCOMPTE) experiment in southern France. This method does not rely on any slant wet delay estimates, instead it uses the GPS phase observations directly.We show that the estimated wet refractivity profiles estimated by this method is on the same accuracy level or better compared to other tomographic methods. The results are in agreement with earlier simulations, for example the profile information is limited above 4 km.