Water vapour monitoring over France using the low-cost GNSS collaborative network Centipede
- 1ENSTA Bretagne, Lab-STICC, Marine Mapping & Metrology, Brest, France (pierre.bosser@ensta-bretagne.fr)
- 2INRAe DSLP - Domaine expérimental de Saint-Laurent-de-la-Prée
- 3Université de Lyon, UCBL, ENSL, UJM, CNRS, LGL-TPE, Villeurbanne, France
- 4Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, IRD, Laboratoire Géoazur, Valbonne, France
In recent years, the significant growth of positioning applications has come with the development of low-cost dual frequency Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers. Such receivers allow high precision positioning to be achieved. They are becoming increasingly popular for geosciences as they allow for large numbers of equipment at affordable prices.
Founded in 2019, the Centipede network is a collaborative permanent GNSS network that aims to offer free real-time centimetric positioning to any user. The network is currently made up of more than 330 low-cost reference stations located mainly in France and has nearly 500 regular users. Since July 2022, the GNSS raw data acquired by the stations forming this network have been archived by the Réseau National GNSS (RENAG) scientific network data centre in order to evaluate their suitability for geosciences applications such as tectonic, sea-level monitoring, troposphere and ionosphere studies.
In this study, we present a first evaluation of the use of this dataset for the retrieval of integrated water vapour content (IWV) over five months in 2022. Troposphere delays are estimated from a PPP analysis and are converted to IWV using a standard procedure. Then, the IWV are compared with those retrieved for GNSS stations from the “conventional” French permanent GNSS networks, the Réseau GNSS Permanent (RGP) and RENAG. The results of these comparisons are conclusive, with root mean square differences in the range of 0.5-2 kg/m2 and high correlations of the time series registered by nearby low-cost and geodetic-class receivers.
These results confirm the high potential of low-cost GNSS networks. The development of such network is a real opportunity for geoscience applications, particularly in poorly instrumented areas. In such areas, their contribution could be especially significant for meteorological or climatological applications for which the monitoring of water vapour by GNSS is widely used.
How to cite: Bosser, P., Ancelin, J., Métois, M., Rolland, L., and Vidal, M.: Water vapour monitoring over France using the low-cost GNSS collaborative network Centipede , EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-9059, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-9059, 2023.
