Diagnostics of atmospheric water vapor content according to GPS measurements

Abstract

A continuously operating GPS network, comprising seven permanent observation sites, is created to study the geodynamic processes in the Baikal region. Processing of the initial GPS data provides continuous atmospheric data in the form of total zenith tropospheric delay, which can be used for meteorological and climatological studies. The total delay is the sum of “dry”, or hydrostatic, and “wet” components. The wet component determines the total water vapor amount and amount of precipitable water over the measurement site. Thus, GPS measurements make it possible to obtain initial data for creating new numerical models of zenith tropospheric delay and total precipitable water vapor for meteorological applications.