Application Study of Water Vapor obtained from GPS for Meteorology

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Recent high precision earth orbit information in GPS (Global Positioning System) has made it possible to retrieve water vapor from GPS measurements. As a result, an application study of GPS water vapor information for meteorology has been started under GPS meteorology. The present study is the fist research on GPS meteorology in Japan.The results of analyzes of GPS data measured in nation wide array of Geographical Survey Institute reveals precipitable water obtained from GPS agree well with those from radio-sonde observatiosn with RMS difference of 2mm. A year-round comparison of GPS precipitable water with that from radio-sonde observation at Tsukuba showed a remarkable diurnal variations in precipitable water connected with land breeze and sea breeze in summer. In addition, by visalization of GPS precipitable water distributions over the Japanese Island based upon 556 GPS sites of Geographical Survey Institute, precipitable water distributions connected with a front moving eastward across the Island can be clearly detected. This indicates that GPS has an ability as an all weather sensor of precipitable water.