NASA Earthdata and principal investigator Stephen Leroy (JANUS Research Group) have released Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS RO) data products that have been reformatted to a common CF compliant format. This data release includes 72 different products from 15 different GNSS RO receivers (or constellations of receivers) processed at four different processing centers. These are the version 2.0 GNSS RO products (version 1.1 is available through the AWS Registry of Open Data).
Data contributed by independent GNSS RO retrievals and processing centers have been reformatted to have a common set of variables.
GNSS RO undergoes processing that is fundamentally different from most atmospheric sounders, but can still be categorized by the following processing steps:
- Uncalibrated data as provided by the satellite instrument with communication information stripped are Level 1a (not part of this release).
- Calibrated data, wherein clock biases of the transmitters and receivers are removed and precise orbits determined are Level 1b.
- Extremely high vertical-resolution profiles of RO bending angle and microwave refractivity are Level 2a.
- Profiles of temperature, pressure, and specific humidity on a coarser vertical grid are Level 2b.
The algorithm was developed with funding from the NASA ACCESS 2019 program and the NASA Supplements for Open Science Support.
For more information about these products, please see the README document and the Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD).
This list of acronyms and additional information relate to items in the referenced datasets list.
CHAMP: Challenging Mini-satellite Payload
C/NOFS: Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System
COSMIC: Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate
EUMETSAT: European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites
GRACE: Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
JPL: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
ROM SAF: Radio Occultation Meteorology Satellite Application Facility
SACC: Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas-C (SAC-C)
TDX: TanDEM-X
TSX: TerraSAR-X
UCAR: University Center for Atmospheric Research
Note: KOMPSAT, METOP, and PAZ are the names of satellite missions. PlanetIQ and Spire are companies that provide data from GNSS-RO satellites.