The project:

Knowledge of the atmospheric distribution of water vapour is of key importance in weather prediction and climate research. It is tightly coupled to processes like energy transfer, precipitation, and is an important greenhouse gas. However, currently there is lack of knowledge about the actual humidity field, both due to a shortage of observations and a sub-optimal handling of humidity in the data assimilation systems, which are used to make estimates of the actual atmospheric field. Such fields are used to start numerical weather prediction and for climate monitoring. Global Positioning System (GPS) signals are particularly sensitive to water vapour. The TOUGH project is to develop and refine methods enabling the optimal use of GPS data from existing European GPS stations in numerical weather prediction models and to assess the impact of such data upon the skill of weather forecasts.

   Processing centers delivering Zenith Total Delays:

ACRI-ST (ACRI - Sciences de la Terre): data from France and western Mediterranean
CHAL (Chalmers University of Technology): data from Sweden and Denmark
NMA (Norwegian Mapping Authority):data from Norway and other Scandinavian countries
ASI (Italian Space Agency Centre for Space Geodesy): data from Italy
IEEC (Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya): data from Spain
LPT (Swiss Federal Office of Topography): data from Switzerland and other Alpine countries
GOP (Geodetic Observatory Pecny): data from central Europe

Mail to oli@acri-st.fr