With the availability of approximately 4,000 radio occultation soundings pe
r day within three hours of observation, COSMIC has the potential to contri
bute significantly to global and regional weather analysis and prediction.
However, the basic radio occultation measurements (phase delays) are very d
ifferent from traditional meteorological measurements (i.e., temperature, w
ater vapor), and to effectively assimilate them into weather prediction mod
els is a challenging task. Over the past five years, considerable progress
has been made in the development of an effective strategy for the assimilat
ion of GPS radio occultation data. In this paper, we (1) review the measure
ment and data reduction procedures, (2) discuss the error characteristics o
f the GPS radio occultation data, (3) discuss the various strategies for da
ta assimilation, (4) review results from recent data assimilation research,
and (5) provide suggestions for future research.
Results from recent studies have led to the conclusion that the best strate
gy to assimilate GPS radio occultation data is a mixture of bending angles
below 10 km and refractivity above 10 km using a variational approach. The
assimilation of GPS radio occultation data is likely to have a significant
positive impact on global and regional weather prediction through improved
definition of water vapor, temperature and wind fields. Although refractivi
ty and bending angles are not directly related to the winds, the assimilati
on of GPS data leads to improvements in the wind analysis through internal
model dynamic adjustments.
In order to make optimal use of GPS radio occultation data in weather analy
sis and prediction, considerable research is needed in: (1) better characte
rization of GPS measurement errors, particularly in the lower troposphere,
(2) improving the computational efficiency and optimizing the strategg of b
ending angle and refractivity assimilation,and (3) performing a set of obse
rving system simulation experiments with realistic simulation of GPS radio
occultation data. These research tasks should be conducted prior to the lau
nch of the COSMIC satellites, so that we can fully realize the potential of
COSMIC data in global and regional weather prediction.