Analysis of the impact of high temporal resolution tropospheric parameters on GNSS station coordinate and troposphere estimation

Abstract Troposphere modelling accuracy can seriously influence the performance of precise global navigation satellite system (GNSS) positioning. The temporal interpolation accuracies of troposphere parameters become important with the improvement in troposphere modelling, especially during the periods of severe weather changes. In this study, a one-month experiment was conducted for 10 EUREF Permanent GNSS Network stations to analyse the temporal interpolation errors of numerical weather model derived troposphere parameters and their influences on GNSS station coordinate and troposphere estimation. The root mean square of the differences between the 1- and 6-hourly European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts reanalysis v5-derived troposphere parameters are 0.72/11.52 mm for the zenith hydrostatic/zenith wet delay (ZWD), while they are 7.09/91.84 mm for the slant hydrostatic/wet delay at a <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:msup> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> <mml:mo>∘</mml:mo> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> elevation angle. The corresponding influences on the estimated upper component and ZWD are 1.28 and 0.79 mm, respectively, in the daily static Precise Point Positioning ambiguity resolution solutions. However, the accuracy improvements are insignificant in the daily static solutions, mainly due to the drop of temporal interpolation errors with increasing elevation angles and the influence of other unmodeled systematic errors. In the 4-hourly static solutions, the accuracies of the up component improve 0.51 mm (5.9% in relative) and 0.29 mm (3.5% in relative) during the severe and stable periods, respectively. These impacts cannot be ignored in some GNSS subdaily applications, for example, monitoring non-tidal ocean loading effects, bedrock and monument thermal elastic effects, etc.