Resolving the acquisition ambiguity for atmospheric monitoring in multi-pass radar interferometry

Abstract

Atmospheric signal in spaceborne radar interferograms can be used for both meteorological interpretation in atmospheric studies, as well as for subtracting it from interferograms intended for surface deformation or topography studies. We show that atmospheric signal can be conveniently described stochastically by a power-law behavior, where the absolute amount of energy in the signal, related to the weather situation, can be described using a χ2 probability density function, based on EUREF GPS data. We present single master stacking as well as cascaded interferogram stacking as methods to derive the atmospheric phase screen from the data.