Troposphere zenith path delays derived from the Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) numerical weather model (NWM) are compared with those of the International GNSS Service (IGS) solutions over a 1.5-year period at 18 globally distributed IGS stations. Meteorological parameters can be interpolated from the NWM model at any location and at any time after December 2004. The meteorological parameters extracted from the NWM model agree with in situ direct measurements at some IGS stations within 1 mbar for pressure, 3°for temperature and 13% for relative humidity. The hydrostatic and wet components of the zenith path delay (ZPD) are computed using the meteorological parameters extracted from the NWM model. The total ZPDs derived from the GDAS NWM agree with the IGS ZPD solutions at 3.0 cm RMS level with biases of up to 4.5 cm, which can be attributed to the wet ZPDs estimates from the NWM model, considering the less accurate interpolated relative humidity parameter. Based on this study, it is suggested that the availability and the precision of the GDAS NWM ZPD should be sufficient for nearly all GPS navigation solutions.

Continuous Global Positioning System (GPS) observations have been logged at the Finnish Antarctic research station (Aboa) since February 2003. The station is located in Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica. Almost 5000 daily observation files have been archived based on yearly scientific expeditions. These files have not been fully analysed until now. This study reports for the first time on the consistent and homogeneous data processing and analysis of the 15-year long time series. Daily coordinates are obtained using Precise Point Positioning (PPP) processing based on two approaches. The first approach is based on the Kalman filter and uses the RTKLIB open source library to produce daily solutions by unconventionally running the filter in the forward and backward direction. The second approach uses APPS web service and is based on GIPSY scientific processing engine. The two approaches show an excellent agreement with less than 3 mm rms error horizontally and 6 mm rms error vertically. The derived position time series is analysed in terms of trend, periodicity and noise characteristics. The noise of the time series was found to be power-law noise model with spectral index closer to flicker noise. In addition, several periodic signals were found at 5, 14, 183 and 362 days. Furthermore, most of the horizontal movement was found to be in the North direction at a rate of 11.23 ± 0.09 mm/y, whereas the rate in the East direction was estimated to be 1.46 ± 0.05 mm/y. Lastly, the 15-year long time series revealed a movement upwards at a rate of 0.79 ± 0.35 mm/y. Despite being an unattended station, Aboa provides one of the most continuous and longest GPS time series in Antarctica. Therefore, we believe that this research increases the awareness of local geophysical phenomena in a less reported area of the Antarctic continent.

On 12 February 2020, the latest four Galileo satellites had completed one full year of space operational service. The satellites were launched on 25 July 2018. The quartet increased the operational capacity of the Galileo constellation to 22 satellites. This study reports on three signal-in-space (SiS) performance indicators-status, availability, and ranging accuracy-from 11 February 2019 to 12 February 2020. In addition, the study looks also at how the on-board satellite clocks have performed. The data analysis shows 100% data validity and signal health status for three our of the four satellites, whereas NAPA (No Accuracy Prediction Available) events accounted for about 2% of the time. In addition, SiS availability was higher than 95% in the first operational year. Furthermore, the 95th percentile of the global average of the instantaneous signal in space error is found to vary between 0.17 to 0.33 m on monthly basis. Lastly, the precise satellite clock biases show high short-term performance with 0.1 ps/s (10 −13 s/s) standard deviations during the first operational year. The numerical results indicate a robust performance and high reliability for the youngest Galileo satellites in the constellation. They increase the number of operational satellites in the constellation and thus contribute to the Galileo's increased popularity in the satellite-based positioning and navigation user community.

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