Abstract. The Global Positioning System/Meteorology (GPS/MET) Program was established in 1993 by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) to demonstrate active limb sounding of the Earth's atmosphere using the radio occultation technique. The demonstration system observes occulted GPS satellite signals received by a low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellite, MicroLab-1, launched April 3, 1995. The system can profile ionospheric electron density and neutral atmospheric properties. Neutral atmospheric refractivity, density, pressure, and temperature are derived at altitudes where the amount of water vapor is low. At lower altitudes, vertical profiles of density, pressure, and water vapor pressure can be derived from the GPS/MET refractivity profiles if temperature data from an independent source are available. This paper describes the GPS/MET data analysis procedures and validates GPS/MET data with statistics and illustrative case studies. We compare more than 1200 GPS/MET neutral atmosphere soundings to correlative data from operational global weather analyses, radiosondes, and the GOES, TOVS, UARS/MLS and HALOE orbiting atmospheric sensors. Even though many GPS/MET soundings currently fail to penetrate the lowest 5 km of the troposphere in the presence of significant water vapor, our results demonstrate iøC mean temperature agreement with the best correlative data sets between 1 and 40 km. This and the fact that GPS/MET observations are all-weather and self-calibrating suggests that radio occultation technology has the potential to make a strong contribution to a global observing system supporting weather prediction and weather and climate research.

This paper provides an overview of the methodology of and describes preliminary results from an experiment called GPS/MET (Global Positioning System/Meteorology), in which temperature soundings are obtained from a low Earthorbiting satellite using the radio occultation technique. Launched into a circular orbit of about 750-km altitude and 70° inclination on 3 April 1995, a small research satellite, MicroLab 1, carried a laptop-sized radio receiver. Each time this receiver rises and sets relative to the 24 operational GPS satellites, the GPS radio waves transect successive layers of the atmosphere and are bent (refracted) by the atmosphere before they reach the receiver, causing a delay in the dualfrequency carrier phase observations sensed by the receiver. During this occultation, GPS limb sounding measurements are obtained from which vertical profiles of atmospheric refractivity can be computed. The refractivity is a function of pressure, temperature, and water vapor and thus provides information on these variables that has the potential to be useful in weather prediction and weather and climate research. Because of the dependence of refractivity on both temperature and water vapor, it is generally impossible to compute both variables from a refractivity sounding. However, if either temperature or water vapor is known from independent measurements or from model predictions, the other variable may be calculated. In portions of the atmosphere where moisture effects are negligible (typically above 5-7 km), temperature may be estimated directly from refractivity. This paper compares a representative sample of 11 temperature profiles derived from GPS/MET soundings (assuming a dry atmosphere) with nearby radiosonde and high-resolution balloon soundings and the operational gridded analysis of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (formerly the National Meteorological Center). One GPS/MET profile was obtained at a location where a temperature profile from the Halogen Occultation Experiment was available for comparison. These comparisons show that accurate vertical temperature profiles may be obtained using the GPS limb sounding technique from approximately 40 km to about 5-7 km in altitude where moisture effects are negligible. Temperatures in this region usually agree within 2°C with the independent sources of data. The GPS/MET temperature profiles show vertical resolution of about 1 km and resolve the location and minimum temperature of the tropopause very well. Theoretical temperature accuracy is better than 0.5°C at the tropopause, degrading to about 1°C at 40-km altitude. Above 40 km and below 5 km, these preliminary temperature retrievals show difficulties. In the upper atmosphere, the errors result from initial temperature and pressure assumptions in this region and initial ionospheric refraction assumptions. In the lower troposphere, the errors appear to be associated with multipath effects caused by large gradients in refractivity primarily due to water vapor distribution.

[1] The methods of processing radio occultation data in multipath zones which were used up to now have very strong restrictions of the applicability. In this paper, we introduce a new approach to the problem of deciphering the ray structure of wave fields in multipath zones using the short-wave asymptotic solution of the wave problem. In geometric optics a canonical transform resolves multipath by introducing new coordinate and momentum in such a way that different rays are distinguished by their coordinates. The wave field is processed by a Fourier integral operator associated with the canonical transform. The transformed wave function can then be written in the single-ray approximation, which allows for the determination of refraction angles from the derivative of the eikonal. The new method retains all the advantages of the back propagation such as the removal of effects of diffraction in free space and the enhancement of the vertical resolution in retrieved profiles, but it has much wider applicability limits. The method is convenient for operational applications. We discuss a fast numerical implementation of the method and present the results of numerical simulations confirming the applicability of the method.INDEX TERMS: 3360 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Remote sensing; 3394 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Instruments and techniques; 6964 Radio Science: Radio wave propagation; 6969 Radio Science: Remote sensing; KEYWORDS: radio occultations, inverse problems, wave propagation Citation: Gorbunov, M. E., Canonical transform method for processing radio occultation data in the lower troposphere,

[1] Fourier integral operators (FIOs) are used for constructing asymptotic solutions of wave problems and for the generalization of the geometrical optics. Geometric optical rays are described by the canonical Hamilton system, which can be written in different canonical coordinates in the phase space. The theory of FIOs generalizes the formalism of canonical transforms for solving wave problems. The FIO associated with a canonical transform maps the wave field to a different representation. Mapping to the representation of ray impact parameter was used in the formulation of the canonical transform (CT) method for processing radio occultation data. The full-spectrum inversion (FSI) method can also be looked at as an FIO associated with a canonical transform of a different type. We discuss the general principles of the theory of FIOs and formulate a generalization of the CT and FSI techniques. We derive the FIO that maps radio occultation data measured along the low Earth orbiter orbit without first applying back propagation. This operator is used for the retrieval of refraction angles and atmospheric absorption. We give a closed derivation of the exact phase function of the FIO obtained in the ''phase matching'' approach by Jensen et al. [2004] We derive a novel FIO algorithm denoted CT2, which is a modification and improvement of FSI. We discuss the use of FIOs for asymptotic direct modeling of radio occultation data. This direct model is numerically much faster then the multiple phase screen technique. This is especially useful for simulating LEO-LEO occultations at frequencies of 10-30 GHz.INDEX TERMS: 3260 Mathematical Geophysics: Inverse theory; 3360 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Remote sensing; 6969 Radio Science: Remote sensing; KEYWORDS: Fourier integral operator, radio occultations, forward modeling Citation: Gorbunov, M. E., and K. B. Lauritsen (2004), Analysis of wave fields by Fourier integral operators and their application for radio occultations, Radio Sci., 39, RS4010,