Annual Global Planetary Boundary Layer Height Climatology from GPS Radio Occultation

GPS Radio Occultation Boundary Layer Depth Annual L3 V1 provides a global climatology of planetary boundary layer (PBL) height derived from COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 and TerraSAR-X satellite GPS radio occultation measurements. The dataset contains annual averages of PBL height and standard deviation binned into 2-degree latitude/longitude grids. GES DISC produced this version, which covers measurements from June 2006 to December 2015.

Use Cases

• Validate climate model PBL height simulations using the gridded mean PBL height and standard deviation values.
• Analyze spatial patterns of atmospheric stability by mapping the latitude and longitude of binned PBL height averages.
• Study temporal trends in boundary layer depth over the 2006-2015 period using the annual average time series.
• Assess algorithm performance for PBL height retrieval by comparing the refractivity gradient method used here against other techniques.

Strengths

• Data spans nearly a decade, from June 2006 to December 2015.
• Global coverage with measurements binned into 2-degree by 2-degree latitude/longitude regions.
• Derived from two satellite constellations (COSMIC and TerraSAR-X) providing distributed local time sampling.

Limitations

• The dataset has been superseded by version 2.
• Occultations near coasts represent ~100 km horizontal averaging over both land and ocean, complicating interpretation.
• The vertical resolution of the source refractivity profiles is about 200 meters.

Provenance

Source

GES DISC, derived from COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 and TerraSAR-X satellite GPS radio occultation measurements.

Collection Method

PBL height calculated as the altitude of minimum vertical refractivity gradient (dN/dz) from each occultation, then averaged into geographic bins.

Time Range

June 2006 to December 2015

Freshness

null

Geography

Global