Quantifying discrepancies in the three-dimensional seasonal variations between IGS station positions and load models
Résumé
Seasonal deformation related to mass redistribution on the Earth's surface can be recorded by continuous global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and simulated by surface loading models. It has been reported that obvious discrepancies exist in the seasonal deformation between GNSS estimates and modeled loading displacements, especially in the horizontal components. The three-dimensional seasonal deformation of 900 GNSS stations derived from the International GNSS Service (IGS) second reprocessing are compared with those obtained from geophysical loading models. The reduction ratio of the weighted mean amplitude of GNSS seasonal signals induced by loading deformation correction is adopted to evaluate the consistency of seasonal deformation between them. Results demonstrate that about 43% of GNSS-derived vertical annual deformation can be explained by the loading models, while in the horizontal components, it is less than 20%. To explore the remaining GNSS seasonal variations unexplained by loading models, the potential contributions from Inter-AC disagreement, GNSS draconitic errors, regional/local-scale loading and loading model errors are investigated also using the reduction ratio metric. Comparison of GNSS annual signals between each IGS analysis center (AC) and the IGS combined solutions indicate that more than 25% (horizontal) and 10% (vertical) of the annual discrepancies between GNSS and loading models can be attributed to Inter-AC disagreement caused by different data processing software implementations and/or choices of the analysis strategies. Removing the draconitic errors shows an improvement of about ~ 3% in the annual vertical reduction ratio for the stations with more than fifteen years observations. Moreover, significant horizontal discrepancies between GNSS and loading models are found for the stations located in Continental Europe, which may be dominated by the regional/local-scale loading. The loading model errors can explain at least 6% of the remaining GNSS annual variations in the East and Up components. It has been verified that the contribution of thermoelastic deformation to the GNSS seasonal variations is about 9% and 7% for the horizontal and vertical directions, respectively. Apart from these contributors, there are still ~ 50% (horizontal) and ~ 30% (vertical) of the GNSS annual variations that need to be explained.