A globally applicable, season-specific model for estimating the weighted mean temperature of the atmosphere

Abstract

In GPS meteorology, the weighted mean temperature is usually obtained by using a linear function of the surface temperature Ts. However, not every GPS station can measure the surface temperature. The current study explores the characteristics of surface temperature and weighted mean temperature based on the global pressure and temperature model (GPT) and the Bevis Tm–Ts relationship (Tm = a + bTs). A new global weighted mean temperature (GWMT) model has been built which directly uses three-dimensional coordinates and day of the year to calculate the weighted mean temperature. The data of year 2005–2009 from 135 radiosonde stations provided by the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive were used to calculate the model coefficients, which have been validated through examples. The result shows that the GWMT model is generally better than the existing liner models in most areas according to the statistic indexes (namely, mean absolute error and root mean square). Then we calculated precipitable water vapor, and the result shows that GWMT model can also yield high precision PWV.