Assessment of operational non-time-critical Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich radio occultation data: insights into tropospheric GNSS signal cut-off strategies and processor improvements

Paolella, Saverio; Von Engeln, Axel; Padovan, Sebastiano; Notarpietro, Riccardo; Marquardt, Christian; Sancho, Francisco; Rivas Boscan, Veronica; Morew, Nicolas; Martin Alemany, Francisco

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-2825-2025

Articles | Volume 18, issue 13

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-2825-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Observing atmosphere and climate with occultation techniques...

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-2825-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 13

Research article

|

02 Jul 2025

Research article |

| 02 Jul 2025

Assessment of operational non-time-critical Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich radio occultation data: insights into tropospheric GNSS signal cut-off strategies and processor improvements

Saverio Paolella, Axel Von Engeln, Sebastiano Padovan, Riccardo Notarpietro, Christian Marquardt, Francisco Sancho, Veronica Rivas Boscan, Nicolas Morew, and Francisco Martin Alemany

Data sets

Radio Occultation Level 1B Products in NTC – Sentinel-6 EUMETSAT https://navigator.eumetsat.int/start

Short summary

This study assesses the capability of the EUMETSAT Sentinel-6A radio occultation (RO) non-time-critical processor to generate high-quality bending angle profiles. The analysis examines various aspects of both the RO instrument and the bending angle processing chain. The resulting bending angle profiles were compared against forward-modeled profiles from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), confirming the processor's ability to consistently produce accurate and reliable data.