Coseismic surface deformation of the 2014 Napa earthquake mapped by Sentinel-1A SAR and accuracy assessment with COSMO-SkyMed and GPS data as cross validation

ABSTRACT

The new land observation satellite Sentinel-1A was launched on 25 April 2014 with a C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensor, which has the significant enhancements in terms of revisit period and high resolution. The Mw 6.1 Napa, California earthquake occurring on 24 August 2014, almost 4 months after the launch, is the first moderate earthquake imaged by the Sentinel-1A. This provides an opportunity to map the coseismic deformation of the event and evaluate the potential of Sentinel-1A SAR for earthquake study. Two techniques including the interferometric SAR (InSAR) and pixel offset-tracking (PO) are, respectively, employed to map the surface deformation along the radar line of sight (LOS), azimuth and slant-range directions. The cross comparison between Sentinel-1A InSAR LOS deformation and GPS observations indicates good agreement with an accuracy of ～2.6?mm. We further estimate the earthquake source model with the external COSMO-SkyMed InSAR and GPS data as constraints, and forward calculate the surface deformation as cross validation with the Sentinel-1A observations. The comparison between the observed and modeled deformation shows that the Sentinel-1A measurement accuracy can achieve 1.6?cm for InSAR technique along LOS direction, and 6.3 and 6.7?cm for PO along azimuth and range directions, respectively.