NASA Earthdata and principal investigator Stephen Leroy of JANUS Research Group have released a new set of Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation data products reformatted to a common Climate and Forecast convention-compliant format, improving cross-program usability for atmospheric researchers and GNSS data users.
The release encompasses 72 products drawn from 15 GNSS RO receivers or receiver constellations, processed at four independent processing centers. Missions represented include COSMIC, CHAMP, GRACE, METOP, TanDEM-X, TerraSAR-X, and KOMPSAT, alongside commercial data providers Spire and PlanetIQ. Data from EUMETSAT’s ROM SAF, JPL, and UCAR are also included.
The standardization effort addresses a longstanding friction point in RO data use: independent retrieval and processing centers have historically produced outputs with differing variable sets, complicating multi-source analysis. The new version 2.0 products give those datasets a common structure across Level 1b through Level 2b processing — from calibrated phase and orbit data through high-resolution bending angle and refractivity profiles to temperature, pressure, and humidity retrievals.
Version 1.1 of the products remains available through the AWS Registry of Open Data. The algorithm was developed with support from NASA’s ACCESS 2019 program and the NASA Supplements for Open Science Support. Full documentation is available via the README and Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document on NASA Earthdata.
