Analysis of Spatial Decorrelation of Small-Scale Tropospheric Delay Using High-Resolution NWP Data

This paper contains results from a study where numerical weather product (NWP) data provided by MET Norway were used to estimate the differential zenith tropospheric delay (dZTD) for an area including Scandinavia, Finland and the Baltic countries. The NWP data have a high spatial resolution of 2.5×2.5 km, and the estimated dZTD for the grid positions allows for calculation of the tropospheric gradient on short baselines. The results give an indication of how large dZTD values for baselines of up to 20 km can be, and of where the largest events are located within the coverage area. One year of data were processed, and dZTD values up to 18 cm with baselines were detected. Preliminary results comparing the NWP-based results with GNSS-based results are included. The motivation for this investigation was to better understand the characteristics of this phenomenon as a preamble to a later investigation of how it might impact GNSS-based navigation systems with integrity support in these regions.