A Novel Method to Improve the Estimation of Ocean Tide Loading Displacements for K1 and K2 Components with GPS Observations

The accurate estimation of ocean tide loading displacements is essential and necessary for geodesy, oceanic and geophysical studies. It is common knowledge that K-1 and K-2 tidal constituents estimated from Global Positioning System (GPS) observations are unsatisfactory because their tidal periods are nearly same to the revisit cycle or orbital period of GPS constellation. To date, this troublesome problem is not fully solved. In this paper, we revisit this important issue and develop a novel method based on the unique characteristic of tidal waves to separate GPS-system errors from astronomical K-1/K-2 tides. The well-known credo of smoothness indicates that tidal admittances of astronomical constituents in a narrow band can be expressed as smooth functions of tidal frequencies, while the interference of GPS-system errors seriously damages the smooth nature of observed tidal admittances. Via quadratic fitting, smooth functions of tidal frequencies for tidal admittances can be determined, thus, astronomical K-1 and K-2 tides can be interpolated using fitted quadratic functions. Three GPS stations are selected to demonstrate our method because of their typicality in terms of poor estimates of K-1/K-2 tidal parameters related to GPS-system errors. After removing GPS-systematical contributions based on our method, corrected K-1/K-2 tides at three GPS stations are much closer to the modeled K-1/K-2 tides from FES2014, which is one of the most accurate tide models. Furthermore, the proposed method can be easily applied to other areas to correct GPS-system errors because their smooth nature is valid for global tidal signals.

Automated summary

The accurate estimation of ocean tide loading displacements is crucial for geodesy, oceanic, and geophysical studies. Estimating K-1 and K-2 tidal constituents from GPS observations has been problematic due to their close periods to the GPS revisit cycle or orbital period. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to separate GPS-system errors from astronomical K-1/K-2 tides by utilizing the smooth nature of tidal admittances via quadratic fitting. The method is demonstrated using three GPS stations, showing improved accuracy in correcting the K-1/K-2 tides.