COSMIC Home Page

COSMIC

Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate

Developing innovative Global Navigation Satellite Systems observational techniques for the Earth Science community

Our Program

The UCAR COSMIC Program has been a leader in the retrieval and scientific application of GNSS, e.g. GPS, data since UCAR led the GPS/MET GPS radio occultation (RO) mission in the mid 1990s. It contributed to the design, management, and operation of the FORMOSAT-3 / Constellation Observing System for Meteorology Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC-1) mission since 2006. The mission is still providing high-quality RO profiles that are having a significant positive impact on weather and space weather forecasting and research. The success of COSMIC has prompted U.S. agencies (led by NOAA) and Taiwan's National Space Organization to execute a COSMIC follow-on operational mission called FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 (COSMIC-2) that will put six satellites with next generation GNSS RO payloads into low Earth orbit.

COSMIC-2 Data

COSMIC-2 neutral atmosphere and space weather data are available at CDAAC and TACC. COSMIC-2 satellite image courtesy of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.

Data Processing Center

Our data processing center uses ground- and space-based GNSS and in-situ sensor observations to generate higher level neutral atmospheric and ionospheric data products for a number of satellite missions in near real-time, post-processing, and reprocessing modes. The table shows current radio occultation profile counts by mission.