Twenty years' (1996-2016) tropospheric parameters for selected EPN stations derived from GPS double-difference processing

Propagation of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) signals through the Earth’s atmosphere is affected by its physical properties. Both hydrostatic and wet part of the atmosphere (mostly related with troposphere) causes delays of GNSS signal, which usually are expressed in the zenith direction (zenith hydrostatic delay - ZHD, and zenith wet delay - ZWD). The combination of these delays is called zenith tropospheric delay (ZTD). Time-space variations of ZTD reflects spatiotemporal changes of troposphere properties, such as air humidity, which plays key role in weather forming. The ZTD can be also converted to other important parameter such as precipitable water vapor.This dataset contains hourly ZTDs time series estimated based on 30-second GPS observations derived from 20 EPN (EUREF Permanent Network) stations, that have been operating constantly for 20 years (1996-2016). The calculation was performed using Bernese GNSS Software 5.2 in the double-difference mode. The 5° elevation mask was adopted to cut-off low elevation satellites. The first-order ionospheric delays were eliminated using iono-free linear combination, while second-order and third-order effects were modelled. The IGS08 type mean antenna was adopted. The dataset contains two subsets which differ in tropospheric delays estimation. The first dataset (BSW_DD_VMF) contains ZTD estimated using Vienna Mapping Function1 (VMF1), while the second one (BSW_DD_GMF) was estimated using Global Mapping Function (GMF).