CHAMP and SAC-C atmospheric occultation results and intercomparisons

[1] The German Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP) and Argentine Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-C (SAC-C) Earth science missions, launched in 2000, carry a new generation of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers for radio occultation sounding of the ionosphere and neutral atmosphere. Though the occultation concept for obtaining profiles of atmospheric temperature, pressure, and moisture was proven in 1995 with GPS/MET, concurrent measurements from CHAMP and SAC-C present the first opportunity for a preliminary evaluation of three central claims: (1) GPS soundings are effectively free of instrumental bias and drift; (2) individual temperature profiles are accurate to <0.5 K between ∼5 and 20 km; and (3) averaged profiles for climate studies can be accurate to <0.1 K. These properties imply that a weak climate trend can be monitored and detected in less than a decade and studied by different instruments at different times with no external calibration. While this detection cannot by itself tell us the source of the climate change, whether natural and anthropogenic, this detection is a prerequisite to answer the more difficult problem of understanding the cause of change. In this paper, these three claims are evaluated by comparing nearby CHAMP and SAC-C profiles. Of nearly 130,000 profiles examined, 212 pairs occurring within 30 min and 200 km of one another were found. Profile pairs agree to <0.86 K (68% confidence interval) and to within 0.1 K in the mean between 5 and 15 km altitude, after removing the expected variability of the atmosphere. If the errors in CHAMP and SAC-C are assumed to be uncorrelated, this implies that individual profiles are precise to <0.6 K between 5 and 15 km. Individual comparisons show closest agreement near the tropopause and display finer resolution than and substantially different temperatures from numerical weather model analyses from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Comparisons between CHAMP and SAC-C largely indicate precision; however, several features observed in common, especially near the tropopause, tend also to indicate accuracy. Limitations of previous experiments (e.g., GPS/MET) in probing the lower troposphere have significantly improved with CHAMP and SAC-C, with the majority of profiles (60%) descending to the lowest 0.5 km. This is expected to increase to 90–95% with future system improvements. However, the N-bias problem encountered in GPS/MET is also present in CHAMP and SAC-C, and it is expected to be much reduced once open loop tracking is implemented. Examples are selected to illustrate lower tropospheric sensing, including detection of the planetary boundary layer height. For the first time, such performance is achieved with GPS Antispoofing encryption on. Daily occultations currently number ∼350–400; this is expected to reach over 1000 in the near future, rivaling the number of semidaily radiosonde launches. With several new missions in planning, this may increase tenfold in the next 3–8 years, making GPS sounding a potentially significant input to numerical weather prediction and climate research.