The sounding density over the tropics will be about 10 times higher.
So we actually expect there to be a huge improvement in hurricane prediction... both the track prediction
(where it goes) and the intensity of the storm.
Radio occultation is a remote-sensing technique that provides or measures vertical profiles
of atmospheric temperature, water vapor, and electron density.
The GPS satellites are located at about 20,000 km above Earth’s surface, which is about
12,000 miles.
The radio waves pass through Earth's atmosphere and are received by satellites at a much lower
orbit, about 500 miles or 800 km.
The satellites in Low-Earth Orbit measure the changes in frequency of these radio waves,
which can then be converted to the amount of bending of the radio waves and then from
there on into profiles of temperature, water vapor, and electron density.
UCAR demonstrated the concept of radio occultation with a single satellite mission that was launched
in 1995.
These were the first observations of Earth's atmosphere from radio occultation.
After the single satellite experiment, we tried to get the United States agencies to
support a larger mission with six satellites in a constellation that would produce enough
radio occultation weather soundings to be useful in numerical weather prediction.
Taiwan became the main sponsor of what became known as COSMIC and then later the United
States agencies joined in as partners.
I would say about 95% of the data that goes into a global numerical weather prediction
model come from the satellite.
The COSMIC radio occultation data, because of the high accuracy, and because of the high vertical
resolution, can be used to benchmark these observations, making them much more useful.
COSMIC data are useful for climate model verification and also are very useful for calibration and
the validation of measurements.
The most key is actually the temperature for the climate research.
COSMIC data are the only global ionosphere observation that can give you the three-dimensional
structure of the entire ionosphere over the whole Earth.
COSMIC has improved data assimilation in the ionosphere models and that helps in terms
of its impact on communications and navigation signals that pass through the ionosphere.
COSMIC is very sensitive to the irregularities in the ionosphere and these irregularities
can impact GPS receiver tracking which can cause you to lose lock on the navigation signal.
6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...
[rocket launch sound...]
COSMIC-2 is really going to be a revolution in atmospheric remote sensing.
The COSMIC-2 spacecraft is really an observing platform that includes the spacecraft itself
and the instrument.
The COSMIC-2 spacecraft will be much more stable than the COSMIC-1 spacecraft and that
will allow us to measure very accurately.
The other part is the radio occultation instrument and that instrument is advanced and it will
provide many more soundings.
The high gain antenna on COSMIC will allow us to see into the lower troposphere and measure
water vapor very accurately and this is the greatest benefit that we think we’ll get
out of COSMIC-2.