Abstract:
Climate change and weather dynamic is the cross-cutting issue all over the world.
For developing countries, especially, for East Saharan African countries including
Ethiopia, the backbone of the economy depends on agriculture and accurate weather
information is demanding. Most of the weather information is obtained from traditional
surface meteorology stations. The weather information obtained from this
station is not accurate enough, had recording bias, and had lacked in a digital data
center. The main objective of this research is to estimate and retrieve atmospheric
parameters such as precipitable water vapour (PWV) using ground-based GPS and
remote sensing techniques such as GPS Radio Occultation (RO) for accurate weather
studies and forecasting. The specific objective of this work was to estimate the regional
vertical Total Electron Content (vTEC) densities, using a linear combination of
L1 and L2 carrier phase for higher-order time delays at different thin-shell layers of the
ionosphere over GPS stations in Ethiopia. Besides this, we estimate the GPS zenith
delays to characterize the error of the neutral troposphere. During this research, we
collected raw observational datasets using ground-based GPS from 2012 to 2015 and
applied formula and modeling methodology. We process GPS observed data through
GPS Analysis (GAMIT/GLOBK) software. From GPS RO, we retrieved bending
angle, refractivity, temperature, pressure, and humidity profiles from Constellation
Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC), European
Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA5 reanalysis and of
the second generation National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
model ensemble Forecast System Reforecast (GEFS/R) and Nevada Geodetic Laboratory
Product (NGL). The longitudinal, latitudinal variations of the ionosphere and
troposphere have been studied and reported by different scholars. Nevertheless, there
is still a limitation regarding accurate estimation of the atmospheric parameters at
different layers of the atmosphere. The merit of this work is that extension studies
had been reviewed and we estimate the vTEC from five alternative layers of approximation
through the ionospheric (i.e., 60, km, 90, km, 150, km, 200 km, and 450 km)
to study ionosphere irregularities and estimate the precipitable water vapour from
the GPS station up of the troposphere layers in order to study seasonal and vertica