A New Empirical Model of Weighted Mean Temperature Combining ERA5 Reanalysis Data, Radiosonde Data, and TanDEM-X 90m Products over China

Abstract

Weighted mean temperature (Tm) is an important parameter in the water vapor inversion of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). High-precision Tm values can effectively improve the accuracy of GNSS precipitable water vapor. In this study, a new regional grid Tm empirical model called the RGTm model over China and the surrounding areas was proposed by combining ERA5 reanalysis data, radiosonde data, and TanDEM-X 90m products. In the process of model establishment, we considered the setting of the reference height in the height correction formula and the bias correction for the Tm lapse rate. Tm values derived from ERA5 and radiosonde data in 2019 were used as references to validate the performance of the RGTm model. At the same time, the GPT3, GGNTm, and uncorrected seasonal model were used for comparison. Results show that compared with the other three models, the accuracy of the RGTm model’s Tm was improved by approximately 12.21% (15.32%), 1.17% (3.09%), and 2.31% (5.05%), respectively, when ERA5 (radiosonde) Tm data were used as references. In addition, the introduction of radiosonde data prevented the accuracy of the Tm empirical model from being entirely dependent on the accuracy of the reanalysis data.