Articles | Volume 18, issue 13
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-2825-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-2825-2025
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

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Cited articles

Anthes, R. A.: Exploring Earth's atmosphere with radio occultation: contributions to weather, climate and space weather, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 4, 1077–1103, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-4-1077-2011, 2011. a
Ao, C. O., Hajj, G. A., Meehan, T. K., Dong, D., Iijima, B. A., Mannucci, A. J., and Kursinski, E. R.: Rising and setting GPS occultations by use of open-loop tracking, J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 114, D04101, https://doi.org/10.1029/2008JD010483, 2009.​​​​​​​ a
Cardinali, C. and Healy, S.: Impact of GPS radio occultation measurements in the ECMWF system using adjoint-based diagnostics, Q. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 140, 2315–2320, https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.2300, 2014. a
Culverwell, I. D. and Healy, S. B.: Simulation of L1 and L2 bending angles with a model ionosphere, Report 17, Radio Occultation Meteorology Satellite Application Facility (ROM-SAF), https://rom-saf.eumetsat.int/general-documents/rsr/rsr_17.pdf (last access: 30 June 2025), 2015. a, b, c, d
Dach, R., Lutz, S., Walser, P., and Fridez, P.: Bernese GNSS Software Version 5.2, User manual, Astronomical Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, ISBN 978-3-906813-05-9, https://doi.org/10.7892/boris.72297, 2015. a
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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.
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