[IGSMAIL-4982]: First GPS occultations from GRACE

[Tony Mannucci]

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IGS Electronic Mail      29 Jul 07:45:18 PDT 2004      Message Number 4982
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Author: Tony Mannucci

Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to announce we have processed the first atmospheric 
occultation profiles from the GRACE satellite.

Please check the GENESIS web site for more information:

http://genesis.jpl.nasa.gov

I would like to thank everybody on the GPS Earth Observatory team at 
JPL for their participation in this successful first test of the GPS 
occultation capability onboard GRACE. Thanks also to the GRACE team 
for scheduling and operating the test. We are very encouraged by the 
results and look forward to exciting scientific contributions from 
the GRACE GPS occultation experiment.

GPS Earth Observatory Team at JPL:
Chi Ao
Danan Dong
George Hajj
Byron Iijima
Manuel de la Torre Juarez
Da Kuang
Tony Mannucci
Tom Meehan
Larry Young

Special Thanks to:
Willy Bertiger
Gerhard Kruizinga
Da Kuang

Additional comments courtesy of George Hajj:
The retrieval is completely independent of any model (we initialize 
the hydrostatic at 50km, with T=245K). Note the interesting sharp 
structure near the tropopause missed by the model (occultation number 
1).

Sincerely,
Tony Mannucci
Supervisor, Ionospheric and Atmospheric Remote Sensing Group
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA

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