Dataset Information

Imprints of COVID-19 Lockdown on GNSS Observations: An Initial Demonstration Using GNSS Interferometric Reflectometry.

ABSTRACT: The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has imposed tight mobility restrictions in urban areas, causing substantial reduction in roadway traffic. Many public parking lots are nearly vacant as people across the world have gone on lockdown since mid-March. This environmental change may have impacts on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) sensors installed on roof of buildings. Here, we use a monitoring site in Boston to exemplify a likely sensitivity of precise GNSS sensors to their nearby dynamic environments including parked vehicles in parking lots. We show that reduced number of parked vehicles since 23 March has decreased the reflector roughness, resulting in an increase in the reflected signal power whose amplitude is quantified by GNSS interferometric reflectometry technique. The uncertainty of retrieved GNSS antenna height drops with beginning of lockdown, allowing more accurate estimate of reflector height, which could have a general implication for better understanding of the fundamental limitations of the technique.

SUBMITTER: Karegar MA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7537003 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Imprints of COVID-19 Lockdown on GNSS Observations: An Initial Demonstration Using GNSS Interferometric Reflectometry.

Karegar Makan A MA Kusche Jürgen J

Geophysical research letters 20200929 19

The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has imposed tight mobility restrictions in urban areas, causing substantial reduction in roadway traffic. Many public parking lots are nearly vacant as people across the world have gone on lockdown since mid-March. This environmental change may have impacts on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) sensors installed on roof of buildings. Here, we use a monitoring site in Boston to exemplify a likely sensitivity of precise GNSS sensors t ...[more]

PMID: 33041388

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Project description:There is currently a gap in satellite observations of the moisture structure during heavy precipitation conditions, since infrared and microwave sounders cannot sense water-vapour structure near the surface in the presence of intense precipitation. Conversely, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) radio occultations (RO) can profile the moisture structure with high precision and vertical resolution, but cannot indicate the presence of precipitation directly. Polarimetric RO (PRO) measurements have been proposed as a method to characterize heavy rain in GNSS RO, by measuring the polarimetric differential phase delay induced by large size hydrometeors. Previous studies have shown that the PRO polarimetric phase shift is sensitive to the path-integrated rain rate under intense precipitation scenarios, but there is no current method to invert PRO measurements into quantitative estimates of the path-averaged rain rate. In this manuscript, a probabilistic inversion approach to the GNSS PRO observables is proposed, where the GPM precipitation products are used for the construction of an a priori look-up table (LUT) database. The performance of the LUTs is assessed for use in the inversion of satellite-based GNSS PRO observations, based on synthetically generated PRO data of actual events, which correspond to co-locations between GNSS RO profiles and the TRMM observations. The synthetic data include end-to-end propagation effects of the polarimetric observables and a simple separation algorithm to isolate the hydrometeor component of the observation. The assessment results in agreement better than ±1 mm/hr between the reference LUT and the actual rain statistics of the synthetic data, proving the suitability of the GPM-based probabilistic inversion tool. These findings indicate that the GNSS PRO products are capable of extending the current GNSS RO ones by associating indications of rain-rate probabilities at different altitudes, at ?250 m vertical resolution and under intense precipitation scenarios with the standard vertical thermodynamic profiles.

Dataset Information

Imprints of COVID-19 Lockdown on GNSS Observations: An Initial Demonstration Using GNSS Interferometric Reflectometry.

Publications

Imprints of COVID-19 Lockdown on GNSS Observations: An Initial Demonstration Using GNSS Interferometric Reflectometry.

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