The rise of GNSS reflectometry for Earth remote sensing

The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) reflectometry, i.e. GNSS-R, is a novel remote-sensing technique first published in [1] that uses GNSS signals reflected from the Earth´s surface to infer its surface properties such as sea surface height (SSH), ocean winds, sea-ice coverage, vegetation, wetlands and soil moisture, to name a few. This communication discusses the scientific value of GNSS-R to (a) furthering our understanding of ocean mesoscale circulation toward scales finer than those that existing nadir altimeters can resolve, and (b) mapping vegetated wetlands, an emerging application that might open up new avenues to map and monitor the planet´s wetlands for methane emission assessments. Such applications are expected to be demonstrated by the availability of data from GEROS-ISS, an ESA experiment currently in phase A [2], and CyGNSS [3], a NASA mission currently in development. In particular, the paper details the expected error characteristics and the role of filtering played in the assimilation of these data to reduce the altimetric error (when averaging many measurements).