GPSROZPBLA: Annual Planetary Boundary Layer Height Climatology from Satellite GPS

NASA's GES DISC provides an annual average climatology of planetary boundary layer (PBL) height derived from GPS radio occultation measurements by the COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3, TerraSAR-X, KOMPSAT-5, and PAZ satellite constellations. The data is generated by calculating the height of minimum vertical refractivity gradient for each occultation, a method detailed in Ao et al. (2012). This collection, last updated in March 2026, is the latest version and supersedes previous releases.

Use Cases

• Validate and improve boundary layer parameterizations in climate models based on the global PBL height climatology.
• Study seasonal and regional variability in atmospheric mixing depth based on the satellite-derived annual averages.
• Analyze the transition from free troposphere to planetary boundary layer using the vertical gradient of refractivity (dN/dz) algorithm.

Strengths

• Derived from a multi-satellite constellation (COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3, TerraSAR-X, KOMPSAT-5, PAZ), providing global spatial coverage.
• Uses open-loop GPS signal tracking through the lower troposphere, which is noted as essential for high-quality PBL estimation at low latitudes.
• Represents the latest version (V2) of this collection, superseding previous versions.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics and data structure must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific analyses.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) via the GES DISC platform.

Collection Method

Derived from GPS radio occultation measurements using an algorithm that finds the height of minimum vertical refractivity gradient.

Time Range

Annual average climatology; specific temporal coverage of source data is not detailed.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 01:41:12.554957.

Geography

Globally distributed measurements from satellite constellations.