Impact Analysis of processing strategies on Long-term GPS ZTD

Abstract

Abstract. Homogenized atmospheric water vapor is an important prerequisite for climate analysis. Compared with other techniques, GPS has inherent homogeneity advantage, but it still requires reprocessing and homogenization to eliminate impacts of applied strategy and observation environmental changes where a selection of proper processing strategies is critical. This paper comprehensively investigates an influence of the mapping function, the elevation cut-off angle and homogenization on long-term reprocessing results, in particular for Zenith Tropospheric Delays (ZTD) products, by using GPS observations at 46 IGS stations during 1995 to 2014. In the analysis, for the first time, we included the latest mapping function (VMF3) and exploited homogenized radiosonde data as a reference for ZTD trend evaluations. Our analysis shows that both site position and ZTD solutions achieved the best accuracy when using VMF3 and 3° elevation cut-off angle. Regarding the long-term ZTD trends, results show that the impact of mapping functions is very small, with a maximum difference of 0.3 mm/yr. On the other hand, the discrepancy can reach 2.5 mm/yr by using different elevation cut-off angles. Contrary to recommendations by previous studies, the low elevation cut-off angles (3° or 7°) are suggested for the best estimates of ZTD reprocessing time series when compared to homogenized radiosonde data or ERA5 reference time series. This conclusion has great significance by eliminating the conflict of different optimal elevation cut-off angles for climate analysis and other applications from GNSS data reprocessing.