Calibration of geoid error models via a combined adjustment of ellipsoidal, orthometric and gravimetric geoid height data

The well-known statistical tool of variance component estimation (VCE) is implemented in the combined least-squares (LS) adjustment of heterogeneous height data (ellipsoidal, orthometric and geoid), for the purpose of calibrating geoid error models. This general treatment of the stochastic model offers the flexibility of estimating more than one variance and/or covariance component to improve the covariance information. Specifically, the iterative minimum norm quadratic unbiased estimation (I-MINQUE) and the iterative almost unbiased estimation (I-AUE) schemes are implemented in case studies with observed height data from Switzerland and parts of Canada. The effect of correlation among measurements of the same height type and the role of the systematic effects and datum inconsistencies in the combined adjustment of ellipsoidal, geoid and orthometric heights on the estimated variance components are investigated in detail. Results give valuable insight into the usefulness of the VCE approach for calibrating geoid error models and the challenges encountered when implementing such a scheme in practice. In all cases, the estimated variance component corresponding to the geoid height data was less than or equal to 1, indicating an overall downscaling of the initial covariance (CV) matrix was necessary. It was also shown that overly optimistic CV matrices are obtained when diagonal-only cofactor matrices are implemented in the stochastic model for the observations. Finally, the divergence of the VCE solution and/or the computation of negative variance components provide insight into the selected parametric model effectiveness.