The next wave of GNSS tropospheric sounding – perspective and retrospective

As one of the most important parameters, water vapor is very valuable for the studies of extreme weather events and climatic phenomena. The GNSS have been proven to be a relatively new technique for sounding atmospheric water vapor which has experienced unprecedented developments over the past decade due to the rapid deployment of wide-spread space- and ground-based infrastructures. This significant development and the long-term accumulation of GNSS data, has offered a strong data support and new opportunity to advance our understanding of climate change and extreme weather events. In the meanwhile, the fifth resurgence of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has empowered us in the ability of big geodetic data analytics and data mining. All these have helped us in the understanding the atmospheric dynamic process, and mining the detailed information of the formation, evolution, development and dissolution of extreme weather events and complicated atmospheric process.This contribution presents a summary of our 10-year relevant research in the area that involves a full spatial domain of ground-, air- and space-based systems and a comprehensive technological domain of GNSS/geodesy, remote sensing, meteorology and atmosphere. First, the background, current status and recent international frontier developments of the GNSS tropospheric sounding technique are summarized. Then, the theory, technical features and major advancement of the GNSS-derived atmospheric products in the applications of climate analyses and extreme weather forecasting are presented. Finally, the challenges, opportunities and future prospectives in terms of the technique and its innovative applications of national and international significance are provided.
The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023)