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Estimates of vertical crustal motion derived from differences of TOPEX/POSEIDON and tide gauge sea level measurements
Author(s) -
Nerem R. S.,
Mitchum G. T.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2002gl015037
Subject(s) - tide gauge , geology , altimeter , geodesy , geodetic datum , sea level , very long baseline interferometry , doris (gastropod) , volcano , seismology , global positioning system , post glacial rebound , ocean tide , geophysics , oceanography , telecommunications , virology , computer science , biology
We have computed estimates of the rate of vertical crustal motion from differences of sea level measurements made by the TOPEX/POSEIDON radar altimeter and a globally distributed network of 114 tide gauges. A rigorous error analysis was performed which suggests the accuracy of the estimated vertical rates is approximately 1–2 mm/year for roughly half of the tide gauges, which is sufficiently accurate to detect a variety of geophysical phenomena. While only a cursory analysis of the estimated crustal motion rates was performed, we observed many interesting phenomena including significant uplift at volcanic islands in the Pacific and uplift of 7–9 mm/year along the southwest coast of Alaska. The results reported here will be useful in a variety of geophysical studies, as well as for validation of similar estimates of vertical crustal motion provided by precise geodetic techniques such as SLR, DORIS, GPS, and VLBI.