International Path Delay Service

Summary

The path delay service uses the output of numerical weather models and computes slant path and zenith path delays in the atmosphere at radio, infra-red or optic ranges, including dry and wet components. Handling the output of numerical weather models is not an easy task: their size exceed 1 Tb/year. The service solves for logistic problem of downloading voluminous datasets, their preprocessing, performing CPU-intensive computations at a dedicated server, and presenting the results in a form that can be used for analysis of GNSS, SLR, DORIS, VLBI, radioastronomy, InSAR, air-born and space-born altimetery.

The goal of the Path Delay Service is to ingest outputs of numerical models, compute path delay through the neutral atmosphere, and to disseminate the results for the entire geodetic community on a regular basis, continuously, and with low latencies. The service is provided free of charge, and no registration is required.

Slant path delay through the neutral atmosphere in a form of 3D time series is provided for 459 space geodesy sites. The dimensions runs over elevation, azimuth, and time.

Download

In total, there are 125991 files to download from this site. To facilitate downloading files with slant path delay, the list of URLs for downloading can be generating by filling a web form:

Downloading pre-computed time series of slant path delay for 459 space geodesy sites. This form will generate a list URLs of individual files or a control file for wget. The series are updated within 1 hour of availability of new output of numerical weather models.

Software

Software SPD for computing computing slanted path delay through the neutral atmosphere using the output of numerical weather models and for the end-user who needs only interpolation of slant path delay for data reduction can be found here.

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by NASA Earth Surface & Interior program, grant NNX12AQ29G.

This page was prepared by Leonid Petrov ()
Last update: 2016.02.26_20:11:10