Evaluating the Accuracy of Jason-3 Water Vapor Product Using PWV Data From Global Radiosonde and GNSS Stations

Jason-3 is equipped with the Advanced Microwave Radiometer-2 (AMR-2) to account for the zenith wet delay (ZWD) caused by the troposphere in the altimeter signal, from which the precipitable water vapor (PWV) can be deduced. In order to investigate the accuracy of PWV from Jason-3 AMR-2 on a global s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing 2021-05, Vol.59 (5), p.4008-4017
Main Authors: Gong, Yangzhao, Liu, Zhizhao
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Advanced Microwave Radiometer-2 (AMR-2)
Altimeters
Altimetry
Global navigation satellite system
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)
Height
Jason-3
Microwave radiometers
Microwave radiometry
Navigation
Navigational satellites
Oceans
precipitable water vapor (PWV)
Radiometers
radiosonde
Radiosondes
Root-mean-square errors
Satellite broadcasting
Sea level
Sea measurements
Stations
Temperature
Troposphere
Tunneling magnetoresistance
Water vapor
Water vapour
Weather forecasting
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Summary:Jason-3 is equipped with the Advanced Microwave Radiometer-2 (AMR-2) to account for the zenith wet delay (ZWD) caused by the troposphere in the altimeter signal, from which the precipitable water vapor (PWV) can be deduced. In order to investigate the accuracy of PWV from Jason-3 AMR-2 on a global scale, we adopted PWV observations from 263 radiosonde stations and 103 Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) stations as reference PWV. These reference PWVs are recorded during Jason-3 cycles 0-119 and are globally distributed in coastal and island regions. Over 60 000 Jason-3 PWV versus radiosonde PWV comparison points and over 380 000 Jason-3 PWV versus GNSS PWV comparison points are used in this study. For GNSS PWV, two PWV height reduction methods (Kouba empirical method and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) method) are used to reduce the PWV from height of station to sea level. The comparison results indicate that the root-mean-square error (RMSE) of Jason-3 PWV evaluated using radiosonde PWV is 3.4 kg/m 2 . Jason-3 PWV has an RMSE of 3.0 kg/m 2 with GNSS PWV derived using ECMWF PWV height correction, while the RMSE between Jason-3 PWV and GNSS PWV derived using Kouba PWV height correction is 3.1 kg/m 2 . In addition, the accuracy of Jason-3 PWV increases when the latitude of its footprints or the distance from its footprints to land increases.
ISSN:0196-2892
1558-0644
DOI:10.1109/TGRS.2020.3017761