Near-real-time radio occultation processing operations for weather forecasting applications
Presenter:
Chad Galley
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Talk
We describe a new operational system for the near-real-time production (with turnaround in minutes) of atmospheric profiles from GNSS radio occultation (RO) data collected by low Earth orbiters (LEOs). RO-based atmospheric profiles are used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and similar international agencies in support of their weather forecasting operations. A central and challenging element in the RO production is the low-latency precise orbit determination (POD) of the low-Earth satellites carrying the RO instruments. In particular, we discuss our approach for low latency and high rate non-differential estimation of the LEO clock states.
The operations are carried out with JPL’s Global Differential GPS (GDGPS) System using the new RTGx software for POD, with real-time GNSS orbit and clock solutions produced by the GDGPS System, and using JPL’s new GNSS Radio Occultation Atmospheric Retrieval System (ROARS) software for retrieving atmospheric profiles. We discuss these systems and their use for the routine generation of RO products from data collected with the GeoOptics Cicero constellation. The system will also be used operationally for processing the RO data from the Jason-CS/Sentinel-6 spacecraft (November 2020 launch) within the required 17 minutes turnaround time to support worldwide weather forecasting operations.
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