Determination of Ocean Tide Loading Displacement by GPS PPP with Priori Information Constraint of NAO99b Global Ocean Tide Model

The published global ocean tide models show good agreement in deep oceans and exhibit differences in complex coastal areas, along with subsequent Ocean Tide Loading Displacement (OTLD) modeling differences. Meanwhile, OTLD parameters (amplitudes and phase lags) derived by Global Positioning System (GPS) Precise Point Positioning (PPP) approach need long time to converge to a stable state and show poor precision of S2, K1, and K2 constituents. Based on the fact that no constraint is imposed in the current kinematic solution, a new method is put forward, in which global ocean tide model predictions are taken as the priori information constraints to speed up the convergence rate and improve the accuracy of the GPS-derived OTLD parameters. First, the data of tide gauge from 01 January 2014 to 31 December 2016 are used to generate the harmonic parameters to evaluate the accuracy of six global ocean tide models and a regional ocean tide model (osu.chinesea.2010). Osu.chinesea.2010 model shows good agreement with the tide gauge results, while NAO99b model presents relatively large difference. The predictions from osu.chinesea.2010 and NAO99b model are employed as reference and the prior information, respectively. Second, continuous observations of 12 GPS sites during 2006–2013 in Hong Kong are collected to generate three dimensional OTLD amplitudes and phase lags of eight constituents using PPP with prior information constraints approach and harmonic analysis. Third, comparing the convergence time of eight constituents from PPP without and with priori information constraints approaches, the results show that the new method can significantly improve the convergence rate of OTLD amplitude estimates which obtain a certain level of stability seven years earlier than that derived by the PPP without priori information constraints. Precision of OTLD parameters derived by the new method is about 1 mm. By comparing with the precision of single PPP approach, the accuracy of eight constituents has been improved, especially for S2, K1, and K2 constituents. Finally, through comparing the different correction effects of OTLD estimates on the coordinates and their time series of the ground GPS stations, the results show that OTLD estimates derived by the new approach have similar influence as the osu.chinasea.2010 ocean tide model. The new method provides an effective means to improve the convergence and precision of the GPS-derived OTLD parameters, and achieve a similar correction as the high precision ocean tide model.