Uncertainty Assessment of the Estimated Atmospheric Delay Obtained by a Numerical Weather Model (NMW)

In this paper, the uncertainty of atmospheric delay maps obtained by a numerical weather model (NWM) is assessed. These models can simulate 3-D fields of meteorological parameters at coarse scales. A few approaches, which are mainly based on zenith wet delay estimates derived by NWM data, have been recently developed to mitigate atmospheric propagation artifacts in synthetic aperture radar interferometry applications. However, an assessment of these estimates is still missing. We present a methodology based on radiosonde data to assess the uncertainty of the meteorological parameters derived from an NWM and the dry and wet delays calculated using these parameters. The methodology is applied to the data generated by the Weather Research and Forecasting model that currently is the model with the higher accuracy relative to its predecessors.