Characterization of diurnal cycles in ZTD from a decade of global GPS observations |
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Authors: | Shuanggen Jin O F Luo S Gleason |
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Institution: | (1) Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, 61-1, Whaam-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-348, South Korea;(2) Center for Space Research, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA;(3) National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK |
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Abstract: | The diurnal cycle of the tropospheric zenith total delay (ZTD) is one of the most obvious signals for the various physical
processes relating to climate change on a short time scale. However, the observation of such ZTD oscillations on a global
scale with traditional techniques (e.g. radiosondes) is restricted due to limitations in spatial and temporal resolution.
Nowadays, the International GNSS Service (IGS) provides an important data source for investigating the diurnal and semidiurnal
cycles of ZTD and related climatic signals. In this paper, 10 years of ZTD data from 1997 to 2007 with a 2-hour temporal resolution
are derived from global positioning system (GPS) observations taken at 151 globally distributed IGS reference stations. These
time series are used to investigate diurnal and semidiurnal oscillations. Significant diurnal and semidiurnal oscillations
of ZTD are found for all GPS stations used in this study. The diurnal cycles (24 hours period) have amplitudes between 0.2
and 10.9 mm with an uncertainty of about 0.5 mm and the semidiurnal cycles (12 h period) have amplitudes between 0.1 and 4.3 mm
with an uncertainty of about 0.2 mm. The larger amplitudes of the diurnal and semidiurnal ZTD cycles are observed in the low-latitude
equatorial areas. The peak times of the diurnal cycles spread over the whole day, while the peak value of the semidiurnal
cycles occurs typically about local noon. These GPS-derived diurnal and semidiurnal ZTD signals are similar with the surface
pressure tides derived from surface synoptic pressure observations, indicating that atmospheric tides are the main driver
of the diurnal and semidiurnal ZTD variations. |
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Keywords: | Zenith tropospheric delay Diurnal cycle Atmospheric tide IGS |
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