A STUDY OF GPS POSITIONING ERROR ASSOCIATED WITH TROPOSPHERIC DELAY DURING NUMA MEDITERRANEAN CYCLONE

Abstract

The adverse and rapidly changing weather conditions during a Mediterranean cyclone (medicane) pose a serious threat to maritime navigation in general. Additionally, failure in correction for GNSS signal tropospheric delay was supposed to significantly degrade the quality of GNSS-based position estimation. Here we present the study results aimed at determination of GPS positioning performance quality and GPS tropospheric error based on experimental observation during the November 2017 medicane. We found identifiable degradation of GPS positioning performance due to medicane-caused tropospheric delay, and propose corrective actions aimed at maintaining GPS positioning performance resilience for several classes of GNSS maritime applications.