Advanced MUlti-GNSS Array for Monitoring Severe Weather Events (AMUSE)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jens Wickert
• Subject Area: Geodesy, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, Geoinformatics, Cartography ; Atmospheric Science
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 418870484

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have revolutionized positioning, navigation, and timing, becoming a common part of our everyday life. Aside from this GNSS currently is currently established as a powerful and versatile observation tool for geosciences. A key application in this sense is atmospheric water vapor monitoring. The precise knowledge of its highly variable spatial and temporal distribution is precondition for precise modeling of the atmospheric state as a base for numerical weather forecasts with focus to the strong precipitation and severe weather events, one of the current key challenges in weather research. GNSS water vapor data, derived from regional ground networks hereby close gaps in the established meteorological observing systems, e.g., at Germany with currently about 270 stations. However, the impact of the currently provided data products to the forecast systems is still limited due to the exclusively focusing to GPS-only based data products, to the limited atmospheric information content, which is provided by the currently used Zenith Total Delay data and to the time delay between measurement and providing of the data products, which is currently about one hour.The AMUSE project will focus these major limitations and pioneer the development of next generation data products, which will overcome the current limitations. The new data products, developed and provided within the project, are expected to significantly improve the impact of the GNSS network data to the regional forecast systems.The main innovations, which will be addressed by the AMUSE project therefore are: • Developments to provide multi-GNSS instead of only-GPS data, including navigation satellite systems, as GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou, increasing the used transmitting satellites from currently 30 to more than 80;• Developments to provide validated high quality slant observations, containing water vapor information along the line-of-sight from the respective ground stations, precondition to include information on the horizontal water vapor distribution around the ground stations; in addition, the value of the information, provided by atmospheric gradients, is investigated;• Developments to provide real-time water vapor information to shorten the delay between measurement and provision of the meteorological GNSS-based information at the main applicants, the meteorological services. The project work at TUB and GFZ will be complemented by a unique “in kind” contribution of the German Weather Service (DWD) to investigate in detail and to quantify the forecast improvement, which can be reached by the new generation GNSS meteorology data. Several forecast experiments will be conducted with focus to the most challenging issue, the precipitation forecast in case of severe weather events.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Galina Dick