Observing upper troposphere-lower stratosphere climate with radio occultation data from the CHAMP satellite

High quality observations of the atmosphere are particularly required for monitoring global climate change. Radio occultation (RO) data, using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, are well suited for this challenge. The special climate utility of RO data arises from their long-term sta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Climate dynamics 2008-07, Vol.31 (1), p.49-65
Main Authors: Foelsche, Ulrich, Borsche, Michael, Steiner, Andrea K, Gobiet, Andreas, Pirscher, Barbara, Kirchengast, Gottfried, Wickert, Jens, Schmidt, Torsten
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Climate change
Climate science
Climatology
Climatology. Bioclimatology. Climate change
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Geophysics. Techniques, methods, instrumentation and models
Geophysics/Geodesy
Global climate
Meteorology
Oceanography
Refractivity
Satellites
Stratosphere
Tropopause
Troposphere
Weather forecasting
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Summary:High quality observations of the atmosphere are particularly required for monitoring global climate change. Radio occultation (RO) data, using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, are well suited for this challenge. The special climate utility of RO data arises from their long-term stability due to their self-calibrated nature. The German research satellite CHAllenging Minisatellite Payload for geoscientific research (CHAMP) continuously records RO profiles since August 2001 providing the first opportunity to create RO based climatologies for a multi-year period of more than 5 years. A period of missing CHAMP data from July 3, 2006 to August 8, 2006 can be bridged with RO data from the GRACE satellite (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment). We have built seasonal and zonal mean climatologies of atmospheric (dry) temperature, microwave refractivity, geopotential height and pressure with 10° latitudinal resolution. We show representative results with focus on dry temperatures and compare them with analysis data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Although we have available only about 150 CHAMP profiles per day (compared to millions of data entering the ECMWF analyses) the overall agreement between 8 and 30 km altitude is in general very good with systematic differences
ISSN:0930-7575
1432-0894
DOI:10.1007/s00382-007-0337-7