Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project LP0883288, 2008-2011.

ARC announced the outcomes of its Linkage Round 2 (2007) on 30 May 2008 and The Centre of Satellite Positioning and Navigation (SPAN) / Measurement Science Group has been awarded the following ARC project starting 2008 for a period of three years.  Three successful geospatial related projects across the nation were awarded in this round of ARC.

[Title] Satellite-Based Radio Occultation for Atmospheric Sounding, Weather Forecasting and Climate Monitoring in the Australian Region;

[Summary] Global climate change and its associated risks are serious issues because the resultant storms, fires, floods, droughts and cyclones are weather events affecting Australia. However, the predictability of such phenomena is seriously limited due to sparse atmospheric sensor distribution. The project titled ¡°Based Radio Occultation for Atmospheric Sounding, Weather Forecasting and Climate Monitoring in the Australian Region¡±, conducted in collaboration with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), will investigate new space borne and ground-based radio occultation techniques, atmospheric sounding technologies and their fusion to overcome such constraints. This project is dedicated to developing superior national capabilities in anticipating, analysing and investigating critical meteorological threats to Australia. This research will significantly upgrade Australia's meteorological services and contribute to the global community.

This project will investigate an innovative approach for global profiling of temperature, pressure and humidity from Earth's surface to the stratosphere by employing a satellite-based radio occultation technique. This technique is promising as it is able to map the detailed refractivity profile and the structure of Earth's atmosphere inexpensively with a fine vertical resolution and high spatio-temporal sampling density. The outcome of this project will be a new methodology for testing and improving regional numerical weather prediction and global climate models in the Australian Region, which will considerably advance our knowledge of atmospheric physics and climate change processes.

[Investigators] Professor Kefei Zhang, Dr Falin Wu, Professor Chris Rizos (UNSW), Dr S Lim (UNSW), Professor J Lee Marshall (BoM), Dr A Rea (BoM) and Dr Y Kuleshov (BoM).

[Funding] Total funding of this project is $1.74 million (including in-kind). This project is the largest ARC project fund attracted to the School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences.

Two postdoctoral research fellows and two APAI students are budgeted in this project.