Successful Holding of the Academic Seminar “GNSS Atmospheric Remote Sensing: A Feasibility Study on Detecting Atmospheric Turbulence”

On the morning of 26 November 2025, the academic seminar “GNSS Atmospheric Remote Sensing: A Feasibility Study of Detecting Atmospheric Turbulence”, hosted by the Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, was successfully held in Meeting Room 206, Building 3, East Lake Campus. The seminar was chaired by Researcher Jianghui Geng, and Professor Zhiguo Deng of Liaoning Technical University served as the keynote speaker.

First, Professor Zhiguo Deng delivered a presentation titled “GNSS Atmospheric Remote Sensing: A Feasibility Study of Detecting Atmospheric Turbulence.” At the beginning of the talk, Professor Deng explained the objectives of turbulence research, including supporting weather and atmospheric forecasting, aviation safety assurance, studies of atmospheric governance and pollutant dispersion, and wind-energy development. He then gave a detailed introduction to the principle by which GNSS electromagnetic signals experience refractive delay when traversing the troposphere, and how high-frequency fluctuation information contained in the wet delay component—Zenith Wet Delay (ZWD)—can be used to study atmospheric turbulence characteristics. In the presentation, Professor Deng showed results of spectral analysis and turbulence-parameter extraction from ZWD time series based on continuous observations from multi-system GNSS. Using the von Kármán turbulence spectrum model, and by fitting the ZWD power spectral density, two key parameters were retrieved: the fluctuation variance σ² and the cutoff frequency α. Combined with lidar and Sentinel satellite imagery for detailed, systematic analysis, the results indicate that both σ² and α derived from ZWD exhibit pronounced seasonal variations and closely follow changes in cloudiness and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), peaking notably during convectively active summer periods. In addition, a four-hour sliding-window analysis revealed that short-term variations in α and σ² respond to rapid adjustments in wind speed and boundary-layer structure, thereby exposing multi-timescale turbulence features hidden in GNSS wet-delay signals. This study offers a new perspective for GNSS meteorology and opens a new avenue for monitoring atmospheric turbulence.

After the presentation, participants engaged in in-depth discussions on topics such as applications of GNSS atmospheric remote-sensing technology and methods for extracting turbulence parameters, and they looked forward to future research. Suggestions included applying atomic clocks in the observation process to reduce the impact of clock bias, and mitigating multipath effects to further purify turbulence power spectra. Attending experts and scholars exchanged deeply on technology application bottlenecks, data-processing methods, and future research directions; the interplay of differing viewpoints broadened ideas for subsequent scientific collaboration and for solving technical challenges.

The successful holding of this seminar not only promoted academic exchange on GNSS technology in the field of atmospheric remote sensing, but also provided a valuable learning platform for researchers in related fields. Participants unanimously agreed that Professor Deng’s report was detailed and insightful, playing an important leading role in GNSS atmospheric remote-sensing research and even opening up a novel research direction that will positively drive future work in related fields.