The usefulness of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) in the analysis of precipitation events

Abstract

It is well known that the use of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), both with ground-based and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) receivers, allows retrieving atmospheric parameters in all the weather conditions.Ground-based GNSS technique provides the integrated precipitable water vapour (IPWV) with temporal continuity at a specific receiver station, while the GNSS LEO technique allows for Radio Occultation (RO) observations of the atmosphere, providing a detailed atmospheric profiling but without temporal continuity at a specific site.In this work, several precipitation events that occurred in Italy were analysed exploiting the potential of the two GNSS techniques (i.e. ground-based and space-based GNSS receivers). From ground-based receivers, time series of IPWV were produced at specific locations with the purpose of analysing the water vapour behaviour during precipitation events. From LEO receivers, the profiling potential was exploited to retrieve the cloud top altitude of convective events, taking into account that although GNSS RO could capture the dynamics of the atmosphere with high vertical resolution, the temporal resolution is not enough to continuously monitor such an event in a local area. Therefore, the GNSS technique can be considered as a supplemental meteorological system useful in studying precipitation events, but with very different spatial and temporal features depending on the receiver positioning.