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Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) is an emerging earth observation method for remote sensing of feature parameters using reflected signals from navigation satellites, and is a purely specular bistatic forward scattering observation means with special right-handed circular polarization incident wave. In this paper, the small-slope approximation model of non-Gaussian sea surface is used as the basis to construct the scattering model for the observation geometry of GNSS-R as well as the L-band characteristics, and the fully-polarization normalized bistatic radar scattering cross section (NBRCS) are simulated by the method of polarization synthesis to analyze the scattering characteristics under different wind speeds and directions on the ocean surface, which highlights the variation of NBRCS with wind direction, and the scattering modeling accuracy is improved by comparing with the data of CYGNSS. In addition, we adopt the observation geometry deviating from purely specular geometry, discuss the scattering azimuth angle, scattering influence, and the relative relationship between different polarizations of the scattering angle under the non-specular geometry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Snow depth is an essential meteorological indicator for monitoring snow disasters. The Global Navigation Satellite System Interferometric Reflectometry (GNSS-IR) technique has been proven to be a practical approach to retrieving snow depth. This study presents a case study to explore utilizing the GNSS-IR-derived snow depth to monitor the 2022 early February snowstorm over southern China. A snow depth retrieval framework considering data quality control and specific ground surface substances was developed using 8-day data from 13 operational GNSS/Meteorology stations. The daily snow depths retrieved from different ground surfaces, i.e., dry grass, wet grass, and concrete, agreed well with the measured snow depth, with Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 2.79 cm, 3.36 cm, and 2.53 cm, respectively. The percentage MAE when snow depths > 5 cm for the three ground surface substances was 26.8%, 53.7%, and 35.0%, respectively. The 6 h snow depth results also showed a swift and significant response to the snowfall event. This study proves the potential of GNSS-IR, used as a new operational tool in the automatic meteorological system, to monitor snow disasters over southern China, particularly as an efficient and cost-effective framework for real-time and accurate monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spaceborne Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) provides a new opportunity for land observation. This study is the first to compare and evaluate the performance of the only two spaceborne GNSS-R satellite missions whose data are publicly available, i.e., the UK's TechdemoSat-1 (TDS-1) and the US's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), for sensitivity analysis with SMAP SM on a daily basis and soil moisture (SM) estimates on a monthly basis over Mainland China. For daily sensitivity analysis, the two data were matched up and compared for the period (i.e., May 2017 through April 2018) when they coexisted (R = 0.561 vs. R = 0.613). For monthly SM estimates, a back-propagation artificial neural network (BP-ANN) was used to construct a model using data from more than two years. The model was subsequently used to derive long-term and continuous SM maps over Mainland China. The results showed that TDS-1 and CYGNSS agree and correlate very well with the SMAP SM in Mainland China (R = 0.676, MAE = 0.052 m3m−3, and ubRMSE = 0.060 m3m−3 for TDS-1; R = 0.798, MAE = 0.040 m3m−3, and ubRMSE = 0.062 m3m−3 for CYGNSS). The retrieved results were further validated using monthly in situ SM data from dense sites across Mainland China. It was found that the SM derived from the TDS-1/CYGNSS also correlated well with in situ SM (R = 0.687, MAE = 0.066 m3m−3, and ubRMSE = 0.056 m3m−3 for TDS-1; R = 0.724, MAE = 0.052 m3m−3, and ubRMSE = 0.053 m3m−3 for CYGNSS). The results in this study suggested that TDS-1/CYGNSS and the upcoming spaceborne GNSS-R mission could be new and powerful data sources to produce SM data set at a large scale and with relatively high precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spaceborne global navigation satellite system reflectometry (GNSS-R) data collected by the UK TechDemoSat-1 (TDS-1) satellite is applied to retrieve global lake levels for the first time. Lake levels of 351 global lakes (area greater than 500 km2 and elevation lower than 3000 m each) are estimated using TDS-1 Level 1b data over 2015–2017. Strong correlations (overall R2 greater than 0.95) are observed among lake levels derived from TDS-1 and other altimetry satellites such as CryoSat-2, Jason, and Envisat (the latter two are collected by Hydroweb), although with large root-mean-square error (RMSE) (tens of meters) mainly due to the fact that TDS-1 is not dedicated for altimetry measuring purpose. Examples of the Caspian Sea and the Poyang Lake show consistent spatial and temporal variations between TDS-1 and other data sources. The results in this paper provide supportive information for further application of GNSS-R constellations to measure altimetry of inland water bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission, launched in 2016, is a small satellite constellation designed to measure the ocean surface wind speed in hurricanes and tropical cyclones. To explore its additional capabilities for applications on the land surface, this study investigated the advantages and limitations of using CYGNSS data to monitor flood inundation during typhoon and extreme precipitation events in southeast China in 2017. The results showed that despite the lack of quantitative evaluation, the CYGNSS-derived surface reflectivity (SR) and flood inundation area was qualitatively consistent with the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM)-derived precipitation and Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP)/Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS)-derived total brightness temperature at circular polarization ( T b C ). The results provide supporting evidence for further designation of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) reflectometry (GNSS-R) constellations to monitor land surface hydrology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]