Mapping the atmospheric water vapor by integrating microwave radiometer and GPS measurements

This paper deals with a procedure to generate maps of the integrated precipitable water vapor (IPWV) over the Mediterranean area by using estimates from a global positioning system (GPS) network over land and from the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) over sea. In particular, we investigate the application of the kriging geostatistical technique to obtain regularly spaced IPWV values. The horizontal spatial structure of water vapor retrieved by SSM/I is explored by computing variograms that provide a measure of dissimilarity between pairs of IPWV values for the region of interest. Because the water vapor density decreases with height, the GPS station elevation is accounted for in the interpolation procedure. In this respect, the potential of the kriging with external drift relative to the ordinary kriging is evaluated by applying a test based on the cross-validation approach. Case studies are presented and qualitatively compared to the corresponding Meteosat infrared images. A quantitative comparison with an independent source of information, such as IPWV computed from radiosonde observations and from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts analysis, is also performed.

[1]  D. Krige.  A statistical approach to some basic mine valuation problems on the Witwatersrand, by D.G. Krige, published in the Journal, December 1951 : introduction by the author , 1951 .

[2]  Noel A Cressie,et al.  Statistics for Spatial Data. , 1992 .

[3]  Jan Askne,et al.  Estimation of tropospheric delay for microwaves from surface weather data , 1987 .

[4]  Hans Wackernagel,et al.  Multivariate Geostatistics: An Introduction with Applications , 1996 .

[5]  R. J. List.  Smithsonian Meteorological Tables , 2018, Nature.

[6]  P. Goovaerts.  Geostatistical approaches for incorporating elevation into the spatial interpolation of rainfall , 2000 .

[7]  A. Gruber,et al.  Atmospheric Water Content over the Tropical Pacific Derived from the Nimbus-6 Scanning Microwave Spectrometer , 1980 .

[8]  H. Wackernagel,et al.  Mapping temperature using kriging with external drift: Theory and an example from scotland , 1994 .

[9]  I. Shapiro,et al.  Geodesy by radio interferometry: Effects of atmospheric modeling errors on estimates of baseline length , 1985 .

[10]  Michael Edward Hohn,et al.  An Introduction to Applied Geostatistics: by Edward H. Isaaks and R. Mohan Srivastava, 1989, Oxford University Press, New York, 561 p., ISBN 0-19-505012-6, ISBN 0-19-505013-4 (paperback), $55.00 cloth, $35.00 paper (US) , 1991 .

[11]  T. Herring,et al.  GPS Meteorology: Remote Sensing of Atmospheric Water Vapor Using the Global Positioning System , 1992 .

[12]  J. Alishouse,et al.  Total precipitable water and rainfall determinations from the SEASAT scanning multichannel microwave radiometer , 1983 .

[13]  Steven Businger,et al.  GPS Meteorology: Mapping Zenith Wet Delays onto Precipitable Water , 1994 .

[14]  Steven Businger,et al.  GPS Meteorology: Direct Estimation of the Absolute Value of Precipitable Water , 1996 .

[15]  David Carlson,et al.  Corrections of Humidity Measurement Errors from the Vaisala RS80 Radiosonde—Application to TOGA COARE Data , 2002 .

[16]  C Logan,et al.  On the kriging of water table elevations using collateral information from a digital elevation model , 2002 .

[17]  W. Emery,et al.  Atmospheric water vapour over oceans from SSM/I measurements , 1990 .

[18]  Frank S. Marzano,et al.  Mapping of precipitable water vapour by integrating measurements of ground-based GPS receivers and satellite-based microwave radiometers , 2002, IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.

[19]  Mike Rees,et al.  5. Statistics for Spatial Data , 1993 .

[20]  András Bárdossy,et al.  Spatial distribution of soil moisture in a small catchment. Part 1: geostatistical analysis , 1998 .

[21]  Patrizia Basili,et al.  Atmospheric water vapor retrieval by means of both a GPS network and a microwave radiometer during an experimental campaign in Cagliari, Italy, in 1999 , 2001, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[22]  Ed R. Westwater,et al.  Remote sensing of total precipitable water vapor by microwave radiometers and GPS during the 1997 Water Vapor Intensive Operating Period , 1998, IGARSS '98. Sensing and Managing the Environment. 1998 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing. Symposium Proceedings. (Cat. No.98CH36174).

[23]  Ralph Ferraro,et al.  The Development of SSM/I Rain-Rate Retrieval Algorithms Using Ground-Based Radar Measurements , 1995 .

[24]  Laurence Eymard,et al.  Remote sensing of integrated cloud liquid water: Development of algorithms and quality control , 1998 .

[25]  S. A. Snyder,et al.  Determination of oceanic total precipitable water from the SSM/I , 1990 .

[26]  G. Matheron.  Principles of geostatistics , 1963 .