Reproducibility of GPS radio occultation data for climate monitoring: Profile-to-profile inter-comparison of CHAMP climate records 2002 to 2008 from six data centers

To examine the claim that Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) data are useful as a benchmark data set for climate monitoring, the structural uncertainties of retrieved profiles that result from different processing methods are quantified. Profile-to-profile comparisons of CHAMP (CHAllenging Minisatellite Payload) data from January 2002 to August 2008 retrieved by six RO processing centers are presented. Differences and standard deviations of the individual centers relative to the inter-center mean are used to quantify the structural uncertainty. Uncertainties accumulate in derived variables due to propagation through the RO retrieval chain. This is reflected in the inter-center differences, which are small for bending angle and refractivity increasing to dry temperature, dry pressure, and dry geopotential height. The mean differences of the time series in the 8 km to 30 km layer range from −0.08% to 0.12% for bending angle, −0.03% to 0.02% for refractivity, −0.27 K to 0.15 K for dry temperature, −0.04% to 0.04% for dry pressure, and −7.6 m to 6.8 m for dry geopotential height. The corresponding standard deviations are within 0.02%, 0.01%, 0.06 K, 0.02%, and 2.0 m, respectively. The mean trend differences from 8 km to 30 km for bending angle, refractivity, dry temperature, dry pressure, and dry geopotential height are within ±0.02%/5 yrs, ±0.02%/5 yrs, ±0.06 K/5 yrs, ±0.02%/5 yrs, and ±2.3 m/5 yrs, respectively. Although the RO-derived variables are not readily traceable to the international system of units, the high precision nature of the raw RO observables is preserved in the inversion chain.