Estimation of tropospheric zenith delay and gradients over the Madrid area using GPS and WVR data

Abstract

We have analyzed data from an experiment over the Madrid (Spain) area obtained from 5 GPS receivers and 3 Water Vapor Radiometers (WVR), in order to compare their retrievals of Tropospheric Slant Delays. For this purpose we have fitted a simple gradient model to both types of data, using a Kalman filter to account for the temporal variability of the zenith and gradient parameters. We show that the retrieved gradients with the two instruments are compatible, thus suggesting that the derived slant delays can be useful for tomographic analysis. We compare the estimates of ZWD obtained with the GIPSY and the Bernese software packages. Finally, we compare the estimated gradients with those obtained with HIRLAM, a Numerical Weather Prediction model.