Combined GRACE and GPS to Analyze the Seasonal Variation of Surface Vertical Deformation in Greenland and Its Influence

Abstract

The geophysical effects are the main factor that causes the nonlinear motion of the station, and a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between the GRACE seasonal load deformation and the GPS station coordinates is helpful to study the physical mechanism that causes the nonlinear motion of the station. Aiming at the continuous GPS coordinate time series in Greenland, this paper comprehensively analyzes the correlation between GRACE seasonal load deformation and GPS station coordinates. First, in order to improve the accuracy of GPS station coordinates, the principle component analysis (PCA) method was used to eliminate the common mode error (CME) of the station coordinates. The results show that this method effectively reduces the uncertainty of the station coordinates time series. Secondly, when extracting seasonal signals, it is found that the singular spectrum (SSA) method can effectively obtain the time-varying part of seasonal signals, and its extraction effect is better than that of the least square fitting (LSF) method. Finally, the seasonal relationship between GRACE load deformation and GPS station coordinates is analyzed from the aspects of time series change, correlation, and WRMS reduction. It is found that there are differences in the amplitude and phase parts of the time series. The mean value of correlation is 0.73, the maximum reduction of WRMS is 55.20% (QAQ1 station), and the minimum is −22.69% (KMJP station), indicating that most stations mainly exhibit seasonal load deformation, while individual stations cannot effectively reflect. In addition, the influence of GRACE seasonal load deformation on the station coordinate parameters is quantitatively analyzed. The results show that the best noise model of the station is mainly WN + FN, which effectively reduces the velocity uncertainty of the station coordinate, and weakens the seasonal term oscillation.

Keywords

• Greenland
• GRACE
• GPS
• CME
• seasonal deformation
• SSA