Propagation modeling for radio occultation remote sensing

Abstract : GBAR method (Gaussian Beam for Atmospheric Refraction) is proposed to efficiently model the propagation in the troposphere. This original method has been validated by comparison to the commonly used PWE-SSF method. A good accuracy of GBAR is demonstrated associated to time gained for long range configurations. Then an approach with a gain in time to evaluate the accuracy of Radio Occultation inversion methods is proposed. It consists in modeling the forward propagation through a realistic troposphere modeled by WRF, using GBAR. An inversion technique is applied to the propagated field. The retrieved refractivity profile is compared with the true profile and the accuracy of inverse method can then be estimated.