Improved mapping functions for atmospheric refraction correction in SLR

Abstract

We present two new mapping functions (MFs) to model the elevation angle dependence of the atmospheric delay for satellite laser ranging (SLR) data analysis. The new MFs were derived from ray tracing through a set of data from 180 radiosonde stations globally distributed, for the year 1999, and are valid for elevation angles above 3°. When compared against ray tracing of two independent years of radiosonde data (1997–1998) for the same set of stations, our MFs reveal submillimetre accuracy for elevation angles above 10°, representing a significant improvement over other MFs, and is confirmed in improved solutions of LAGEOS and LAGEOS 2 data analysis.