Remote sensing of water vapor content using ground-based GPS data

Spatial and temporal resolution of water vapor content is useful in improving the accuracy of short-term weather prediction. Dense and continuously tracking regional GPS arrays will play an important role in remote sensing atmospheric water vapor content. In this study, a piecewise linear solution method was proposed to estimate the precipitable water vapor (PWV) content from ground-based GPS observations in Hong Kong. To evaluate the solution accuracy of the water vapor content sensed by GPS, the upper air sounding data (radiosonde) that are collected locally was used to calculate the precipitable water vapor during the same period. One-month results of PWV from both ground-based GPS sensing technique and radiosonde method are in agreement within 1–2 mm. This encouraging result will motivate the GPS meteorology application based on the establishment of a dense GPS array in Hong Kong.