Spatial interpolation techniques for near real-time mapping of Pressure and Temperature data

Among the different techniques for atmosphere monitoring, the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) can provide an innovative contribution (Bevis et al., 1992; Crespi et al., 2004; Sguerso et al., 2013, 2015). The Laboratory of Geomatics, Geodesy and GIS of the University of Genoa has identified a GIS procedure and a simplified physical model to monitor the Precipitable Water Vapour (PWV) content, using data measured by existing infrastructures. The starting points are local estimations of Zenith Total Delay (ZTD) from a GNSS Permanent Stations (PSs) network, a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and local Pressure (P) and Temperature (T) measurements (Sguerso et al., 2014; Ferrando et al., 2016). The present paper shows the study of the most appropriate interpolation technique for P and T data to create PWV maps in a quick, stable and automatic way, to support the monitoring of intense meteorological events for both a posteriori and near real-time applications. The resulting P and T maps were compared to meteorological re-analysis, to check the reliability of the simplified physical model. Additionally, the Regression Kriging (RK) was employed to evaluate the data correlation with elevation and to study the applicability of the technique.