A new Australian GNSS radio occultation data processing platform

GNSS Radio Occultation (RO) is a robust space-borne technology for sounding the Earth's atmosphere with global coverage. The data retrieved using GNSS RO have been demonstrated to provide unprecedented advantages to operational weather analysis and forecasting and regional reanalysis and climate monitoring. This technology has been considered as a new avenue for profiling the atmosphere with a high accuracy and high vertical resolution that is not subject to biases and instrument drifting, and has heralded a new era of climate, weather and severe weather forecasting systems. Most recently, GNSS RO profiles from COSMIC, MetOp and GRACE have been successfully used operationally in Australia and eighthour forecast improvement has been demonstrated.