A three-year study of radio wave propagating delays due to tropospheric water vapor

Measurements of the radio emission from the sky at 21.0 and 31.4 GHz have been made from May 1980 to April 1983 at the Onsala Space Observatory on the west coast of Sweden. A total of 483 such observations have been used to calculate the water vapor induced propagation delay of radiowaves penetrating the troposphere. A comparison with simultaneous radiosonde launches made at Gothenburg-Landvetter Airport (37 km away from Ousala) gives a root mean square (rms) difference of 1.3 cm in the zenith direction and 1.1 cm for a certain group of stable weather data. The zenith wet path delays are also calculated with three different models based on traditional meteorological observations at the surface. The lowest rms difference obtained by using a model and compare the results with radiosonde data at the same site was 2.1 cm. A third site on the Swedish west coast was compared with the other two by using old monthly means of radiosonde data together with the three models. The offsets between the models and the radiosonde/water vapor radiometer (WVR) data are dependent on the model, on the site, and on the time of the year.