Tomography of the lower troposphere using a small dense network of GPS receivers

Abstract

The application of tomographic techniques to the troposphere with GPS signals was demonstrated in previous work using data from the Kilauea permanent network, Hawaii. Local orography of the network considered there, however, played a key role in the resolution capabilities of the technique. Here we explore the possibilities of tomographic reconstruction of the four-dimensional (4-D) structure of water vapor using a very small network of global positioning satellite (GPS) receivers with virtually no height differences between the stations. The analyzed campaign consisted of seven GPS receivers located at the Onsala Space Observatory, Onsala, Sweden, and was carried out in August 1998. Traditional meteorological data sources and tools such as the numerical weather model NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5), satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Washington, DC, and data and analysis from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), Reading, U.K., have been used to evaluate our results. A good agreement is found between GPS tomography and classical methods, even in meteorological situations with complex vertical structure of water vapor.