Variational data assimilation for deriving global climate analyses from GNSS radio occultation data

A comprehensive global navigation satellite system (GNSS) based radio occultation (RO) data set is available for meteorology and climate applications since the start of GNSS RO measurements aboard the CHAllenging Mini-satellite Payload (CHAMP) satellite in February 2001. Global coverage, all-weather capability, long-term stability and accuracy not only makes this innovative use of GNSS signals a valuable supplement to the data set assimilated into numerical weather prediction (NWP) systems but also an excellent candidate for global climate monitoring. We present a 3D variational data assimilation (3D-Var) scheme developed to derive consistent global analysis fields of temperature, specific humidity, and surface pressure from GNSS RO data. The system is based on the assimilation of RO data within 6 h time windows into European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) short-term (24 h, 30 h) forecasts, to derive climatologic monthly mean fields. July 2003 was used as a test-bed for assessing the system’s performance. The results show good agreement with climatologies derived from RO data only and recent NWP impact studies. These findings are encouraging for future developments to apply the approach for longer term climatologic analyses, validation of other data sets, and atmospheric variability studies.