The Application of Radio Occultation Observations for Climate Monitoring and Numerical
Weather Prediction in Australia
John Le Marshall1,2, Robert Norman2, Kefei Zhang2, Yi Xiao1 and Peter Steinle1
1Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR)/Bureau of Meteorology, Australia
2RMIT University, Australia
Earth Observations from Space (EOS) provide vital information related to atmospheric state,
particularly in the Southern hemisphere. Radio occultation (RO) data are an important part of these
EOS. In relation to NWP, experiments were undertaken where three months of RO observations have
been assimilated using 4D-Var into the global Australian Community Climate Earth Systems
Simulator, ACCESS-G, which is employed at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to provide
operational forecasts. The RO data were found to improve forecasts in the lower, middle and upper
troposphere. Improvements varied from small, to up to eight-hours improvement in 48-hour forecasts
of mean sea level pressure. The RO data also enabled important activities such as examination of
radiosonde performance and temperature trends. In particular, differences between RO data based,
area weighted annual average short-term (2007–2010) temperature trends over the Australian region
and the southern hemisphere and those obtained by averaging data at radiosonde network sites were
noted. In the Australian region a mid and upper tropospheric area averaged temperature increase from
2007 to 2010 was accompanied by an average cooling at radiosonde sites. Other activities included
use of RO to probe ionospheric content and application of a 3D numerical ray tracing technique to
gauge the effects of transverse refractive gradients in the ionosphere and in the lower atmosphere on
GPS signal paths for both ground-based and Low Earth Orbiting receivers. Results documented here
indicate the use of radio occultation data has the potential to improve operational analysis and
forecasting in the Australian region and to make a very important and unique contribution to vital
tasks such as climate monitoring.