EGU25-15720, updated on 15 Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-15720
EGU General Assembly 2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Employing the numerical weather prediction for direct modelling of SLR atmospheric corrections
Maksym Vasiuta1, Barbara Süsser-Rechberger2, Torsten Mayer-Guerr2, and Heikki Järvinen1
Maksym Vasiuta et al.
  • 1University of Helsinki, Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research, Dynamic meteorology, Helsinki, Finland (maksym.vasiuta@helsinki.fi)
  • 2Technical University of Graz, Institute of Geodesy, Graz, Austria

The atmospheric delay correction of Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) ground observations depends on the state of the neutral atmosphere. In the state-of-the-art SLR network processing, this delay is an empirical function of local station-based meteorological variables. We propose an alternative modelling approach commonly used in Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). Here, the slant delay (SD) is estimated via ray tracing (RT) with atmospheric information provided by Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP). We compare the default processing of the atmospheric correction using the Mendes-Pavlis (M-P) model supplied with station meteorological data and the alternative processing using the Least Travel Time version 2 (LTT v2) ray tracer coupled with the Open Integrated Forecasting System (OpenIFS) NWP model of European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Additionally, we employ a hybrid approach where the M-P model is supplied with interpolated weather forecast data. Our SLR processing setup is a position determination of 10 satellites using only the SLR observations from December 2016, done using the Gravity Recovery Object Oriented Programming System (GROOPS) toolkit. We compare three atmospheric modelling approaches by employing their slant delay estimates in the SLR processing and performing residual analysis.

How to cite: Vasiuta, M., Süsser-Rechberger, B., Mayer-Guerr, T., and Järvinen, H.: Employing the numerical weather prediction for direct modelling of SLR atmospheric corrections, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-15720, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-15720, 2025.