How does data collected through the AIRS program compare with data that could be gathered using radio occultation?
A. AIRS and radio occultation (GPS) are very different types of programs. AIRS looks down and scans from side to side across its track to map the three-dimensional temperature and water vapor distribution. Radio occultation (satellite-to-satellite using GPS constellation) looks along a path drawn between two satellites that is tangent to the Earth’s surface at some point. The major difference between the programs is two-fold: 1) Spatial coverage – AIRS blankets the globe in the course of a single day, making observations equivalent to 300,000 balloon-borne radiosondes. GPS provides (using all combinations of satellites so instrumented) perhaps several thousand observations at a particular level in the atmosphere in the course of a day. The GPS observation, where it occurs, has a higher vertical resolution than AIRS, but coarser horizontal resolution. 2) Atmospheric parameters retrieved – AIRS retrieves both the temperature profile and the water vapor profile at the same time. The GPS o
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