Abstract
Abstract. Within the transpolar drifting expedition MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate), the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) was used among other techniques to monitor variations in atmospheric water vapor. Based on 15 months of continuously tracked GNSS data including GPS, GLONASS and Galileo, epoch-wise coordinates and hourly zenith total delays (ZTDs) were determined using a kinematic precise point positioning (PPP) approach. The derived ZTD values agree to 1.1 ± 0.2 mm (root mean square (rms) of the differences 10.2 mm) with the numerical weather data of ECMWF's latest reanalysis, ERA5, computed for the derived ship's locations. This level of agreement is also confirmed by comparing the on-board estimates with ZTDs derived for terrestrial GNSS stations in Bremerhaven and Ny-Ålesund and for the radio telescopes observing very long baseline interferometry in Ny-Ålesund. Preliminary estimates of integrated water vapor derived from frequently launched radiosondes are used to assess the GNSS-derived integrated water vapor estimates. The overall difference of 0.08 ± 0.04 kg m−2 (rms of the differences 1.47 kg m−2) demonstrates a good agreement between GNSS and radiosonde data. Finally, the water vapor variations associated with two warm-air intrusion events in April 2020 are assessed.
Highlights
Troposphere delays are generally regarded as one of the primary error sources in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning and get modeled and estimated in the GNSS analysis process
We derived a 15month zenith total delay and water vapor time series between summer 2019 and autumn 2020 observed by a GNSS receiver installed aboard the German research vessel (RV) Polarstern (Alfred Wegener Institute, 2017) as part of the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition
The quality of the derived zenith total delays (ZTDs) is expected to be almost similar to the results shown in this study
Summary
Troposphere delays are generally regarded as one of the primary error sources in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning and get modeled and estimated in the GNSS analysis process. We derived a 15month zenith total delay and water vapor time series between summer 2019 and autumn 2020 observed by a GNSS receiver installed aboard the German RV Polarstern (Alfred Wegener Institute, 2017) as part of the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition. The GNSS receiver was a continuously operational instrument within the ship-based atmosphere monitoring system It was provided by the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences with the main motivation to derive water vapor variations continuously from the ground and to allow a comparison for the radiosonde data. Following this introduction, the GNSS installation on RV Polarstern and data availability is discussed in Sect.
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