Time series of atmospheric water vapour and troposphere zenith total delay, over Central and South America, from a homogeneous GNSS reprocessing (MAGGIA ZTD & IWV Solution 1)

As a preliminary application for this data set, we have estimated local water vapour trends, their significance, and their relation with specific climate regimes. We have found evidence of drying at temperate regions in South America, at a rate of about 2 % per decade, while a slow moistening of the troposphere over tropical regions is also weakly suggested by our results. Furthermore, we have assessed the regional performance of the empirical model GPT2w to blindly estimate troposphere delays.

The model reproduces the observed mean delays fairly well, including their annual and semi-annual variations. Nevertheless, a long-term evaluation has shown systematical biases, up to 20 mm, probably inherited from the underlying atmospheric reanalysis. Additionally, the complete data set has been made openly available as supplementary material.