Analysis of Crustal Deformation Due to Ocean Tide Loading

Abstract

The crustal deformation due to Ocean Tide Loading (OTL) in the Korean peninsula reaches up to ˜3 cm in the vertical direction. Considering that the achievable positioning accuracy of current state-of-the-art space geodesy technologies is at the several millimeter level, the centimeter-level OTL effect should be precisely modelled and corrected for. This study begins with comparison of ocean tide models and validation of OTL-prediction softwares. Different ocean tide models caused about ˜6 mm RMS differences in the vertical deformation in the Kyung-gi Bay area. When we analyzed the OTL displacements in the Seoul, Ulsan, and Seogwipo areas where three VLBI observatories are planned to be installed, the maximum displacement of ˜3.5 cm was predicted in the Seogwipo area and ˜2 cm in the Seoul and Ulsan areas. When the OTL corrections were not applied in the GPS data processing, the OTL effect propagates into the Zenith Wet Delay (ZWD) estimates, and the scale factor between ZWD differences and OTL displacements was 3.72.

Keywords

• GPS
• Ocean Tide Loading
• ocean tide
• crustal deformation