Multi-technique comparisons of 10 years of wet delay estimates on the west coast of Sweden

Review article, 2012

We present comparisons of 10-year-long time series of the atmospheric zenith wet delay (ZWD), estimated using the global positioning system (GPS), geodetic very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), a water vapour radiometer (WVR), radiosonde (RS) observations, and the reanalysis product of the European Centre for Medium- Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). To compare the data sets with each other, a Gaussian filter is applied. The results from 10 GPS–RS comparisons using sites in Sweden and Finland show that the full width at half maximum at which the standard deviation (SD) is a minimum increases with the distance between each pair. Comparisons between three co-located techniques (GPS, VLBI, and WVR) result in mean values of the ZWD differences at a level of a few millimetres and SD of less than 7 mm. The best agreement is seen in the GPS–VLBI comparison with a mean difference of −3.4 mm and an SD of 5.1 mm over the 10-year period. With respect to the ZWD derived from other techniques, a positive bias of up to ∼7 mm is obtained for the ECMWF reanalysis product. Performing the comparisons on a monthly basis, we find that the SD including RS or ECMWF varies with the season, between 3 and 15 mm. The monthly SD between GPS and WVR does not have a seasonal signature and varies from 3 to 7 mm.