Observation of mesoscale ocean currents from GEOSAT altimeter data

This paper discusses an altimeter data processing technique designed to compute time series of the mesoscale dynamic sea surface and to produce mean sea surfaces and surface variability. The technique has been applied to Geosat data collected over the North and South Atlantic and the South Indian Ocean. The computed mean sea surfaces show a high correlation with ocean bottom topography, whereas the variability is found to be associated with mesoscale ocean currents. High variability levels are spotted near the Gulfstream Extension and the Agulhas Return Current.Detailed examination of the sea surface and related flow field time series made it possible to identify a large number of eddies and to keep track of them in both the nort-west and south-east Atlantic. Additionally, some of the eddy characteristics have been resolved such as translation and swirl velocity. It is found that the eddy motion is affected by ocean bottom slopes.     

Recent Geodetic Results in the Azores Triple Junction Region

—GPS (Global Positioning System) observations started to be carried out in the Azores region under the scope of the TANGO (TransAtlantic Network for Geodesy and Oceanography) project in 1988. The measurements carried out between 1993 and 2000 (five campaigns) on nine GPS sites (one per island) were reprocessed using two state–of–the-art software packages. Different methodologies were applied to compute each campaign solution and the derived velocity field. The velocity fields, including the motions of two permanent stations, recently installed in the Azores, were computed within the most recent geodetic reference frame, ITRF2000 (International Terrestrial Reference Frame, solution 2000). They are compared with the motions of the stable rigid tectonic plates using as reference DEOS2k, a global tectonic model developed using geodetic data. The relative motions between the Western and Central groups of islands yield to evaluate the opening rate of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (boundary between the North American plate and the Eurasian and African plates). Concerning the boundary between the Eurasian and African plates, the motion of the TANGO sites in the Central and Eastern groups clearly identifies the transition pattern between those two plates. Two of the sites are considered to be located in the stable part of these plates, whereas the remaining five are within the deformation region of the Eurasia-Africa boundary. The conclusions are analyzed in view of the different deformation models, derived from geodynamic or geophysical data that have been proposed for the region.     

Angular velocities of Nubia and Somalia from continuous GPS data: implications on present-day relative kinematics

This study focuses on the break-up of the African tectonic plate into separate Nubian and Somalian blocks, based on recent Global Positioning System (GPS) data. A new, unique velocity field has been obtained by processing all available observations of permanent GPS stations on Africa since 1996. The quantity and distribution of the stations and the length of the time-series of observations exceed that of previous studies by a considerable margin, allowing one to derive a reliable estimate of the differential motion between the Nubia and Somalian plates, which are considered as a single (African) block in the prevailing global tectonic plate models. The estimated relative pole of rotation of Somalia with respect to Nubia is located at 54.8°S; 37.0°E with magnitude −0.069°/Ma, implying distinct opening in the Ethiopian Rift of magnitude ≈7 mm/year and azimuth ≈N94°E, whereas in southeastern South Africa this value is reduced to ≈2 mm/year in almost the same direction. This is in accordance with some of the independent geological and geophysical tectonic models of the Nubia-Somalia plate boundary region. However, the spatial density of the current tracking network is still not optimal to establish the exact location of the entire Somalia-Nubia plate boundary; in particular, the possible branch east of Lake Victoria and heading towards the Mozambique Channel is impossible to confirm or reject at this moment.     

Comparison between the harmonic and response methods of tidal analysis using TOPEX/POSEIDON altimetry

Three years of TOPEX/POSEIDON altimeter data have been processed at Delft Institute for Earth-Oriented Space Research (DEOS) to solve the major diurnal and semi-diurnal constituents of the global ocean tide using the two classical methods of tidal analysis, i.e. the harmonic and response analyses. Some experiments with the parameters in the response formalism show that the tidal admittance in both the diurnal and semi-diurnal band can be adequately described with a lag interval of 2 days and a number of lags of three. Results of both methods are evaluated from the differences with the most recent Grenoble hydrodynamic model (FES95.2) and from the fit with the harmonic constants of a globally distributed set of tide gauges. It was found that the solutions of the two methods differ at the millimeter level and are thus fully equivalent, which is confirmed by the tide gauges and the differences with FES95.2. From the comparisons with the Grenoble model it was found that the M ₂ and S ₂ solutions of that model likely contain bathymetric errors which are of the order of 1–2 cm for M ₂ and 0.5 cm for S ₂. Received: 18 December 1996 / Accepted: 12 May 1997     

Ocean tides from T/P, ERS-1, and GEOSAT altimetry

 Aliasing of the diurnal and semi-diurnal tides is a major problem when estimating the ocean tides from satellite altimetry. As a result of aliasing, the tides become correlated and many years of altimeter observations may be needed to seperate them. For the three major satellite altimetry missions to date i.e., GEOSAT, ERS-1, and TOPEX/POSEIDON (T/P), the alias periods as well as the Rayleigh periods over which the tides decorrelate can be identified. Especially in case of GEOSAT and ERS-1, severe correlation problems arise. However, it is shown by means of covariance analyses that the tidal phase advance differences on crossing satellite groundtracks can significantly reduce the correlations among the diurnal and semi-diurnal tides and among these tides and the seasonal cycles of ocean variability. Therefore, it has been attempted to solve a multi-satellite response tidal solution for the diurnal and semi-diurnal bands from a total of 7 years of altimetry. Unfortunately, it could be shown that the GEOSAT and ERS-1 orbit errors are too large to improve a 3-year T/P tidal solution with about 2 years of GEOSAT and 2 years of ERS-1 altimeter observations. However, these results are preliminary and it is expected that more accurate orbits, which have become available recently for ERS-1, and additional altimeter data from ERS-2 and the GEOSAT Follow-On (GFO) should lead to an improved T/P tidal model. Received: 4 May 1999 / Accepted: 24 January 2000     

Analysis of the EUREF-89 GPS data from the SLR/VLBI sites

In May 1989, the IAG Subcommission for the European Reference Frame organized a GPS measurement campaign, called EUREF-89, to establish a common European Reference Frame. During a 2-week period various types of GPS receivers were deployed at about 100 different locations in Europe, which included many national geodetic first order points and most of the well-known SLR and VLBI sites. In this study, the measurements from those SLR and VLBI sites, and three additional points in The Netherlands, have been analyzed adopting a fiducial network approach. In the first place, the study provided valuable experience in the use of the GIPSY software for the analysis of GPS data from large networks equipped with a mixture of receiver types. Furthermore, this analysis represents an independent check of the SLR/VLBI network, used as the reference frame for the official EUREF solution. Daily solutions of baselines up to 2500 km in length have been obtained with a repeatability of 0.5–2.0 parts in 10⁸, while the agreement with SLR results is at about the same level. The accuracy of the estimated coordinates is at a level of about 4.0 cm in the horizontal and 6.0 cm in the vertical direction. Of particular interest are the results for some baselines in Greece, which have also been measured by mobile SLR in the framework of the WEGENER/MEDLAS project. The GPS results seem to confirm the trends in the baseline length changes emerging from those SLR studies.     

TOPEX/Poseidon orbit error assessment

This paper discusses the accuracy of TOPEX/Poseidon orbits computed at Delft University, Section Space Research & Technology (DUT/SSR&T), from several types of tracking data,i.e. SLR, DORIS, and GPS. To quantify the orbit error, three schemes are presented. The first scheme relies on the direct altimeter observations and the covariance of the JGM-2 gravity field. The second scheme is based on crossover difference residuals while the third scheme uses the differences of dynamic orbit solutions with the GPS reduced-dynamic orbit. All three schemes give comparable results and indicate that the radial orbit error of TOPEX/Poseidon is 3–4 cm. From the orbit comparisons with GPS reduced dynamic, both the along-track and cross-track errors of the dynamic orbit solutions were found to be within 10–15 cm.     

A method to determine regional lunar gravity fields from earth-based satellite tracking data

A method to determine regional gravity fields of the Moon from Earth-based Doppler and range satellite tracking data residuals of a low Moon-orbiting satellite has been developed and thoroughly tested in a controlled simulation environment. A short-arc approach, where one arc consists of the time it takes the satellite to cross the grid of interest on the lunar surface, is used in order to filter out most long-wavelength signal that can still be present in the residuals. Simulation results where the data are contaminated with either typical systematic or stochastic noise show that recovery of the local gravity field down to the level of several mGal is possible. The inclusion of extremely low-altitude data also means that regularisation in the sense of including a priori information in the form of a regularisation matrix is not necessary in order to obtain a good solution at high resolution.