Application of locality principle to radio occultation studies of the Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere

A new formulation of the previously introduced principle of locality is presented. The principle can be applied for modernization of the radio occultation (RO) remote sensing of the atmospheres and ionospheres of the Earth and other planets. The principle states that significant contributions to variations of the intensity and phase of the radio waves passing through a layered medium are connected with influence of the vicinities of tangential points where the refractivity gradient is perpendicular to the radio ray trajectory. The RO method assumes spherical symmetry of the investigated medium. In this case, if location of a tangent point relative to the spherical symmetry centre is known, the time derivatives of the RO signal phase and Doppler frequency variations can be recalculated into the refractive attenuation.