ALBERT

Description: In the context of the 2014 realization of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame, the International DORIS (Doppler Orbitography Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite) Service (IDS) has delivered to the IERS a set of 1140 weekly SINEX files including station coordinates and Earth orientation parameters, covering the time period from 1993.0 to 2015.0. From this set of weekly SINEX files, the IDS combination centre estimated a cumulative DORIS position and velocity solution to obtain mean horizontal and vertical motion of 160 stations at 71 DORIS sites. The main objective of this study is to validate the velocities of the DORIS sites by comparison with external models or time-series. Horizontal velocities are compared with two recent global plate models (GEODVEL 2010 and NNR-MORVEL56). Prior to the comparisons, DORIS horizontal velocities were corrected for Global Isostatic Adjustment from the ICE-6G (VM5a) model. For more than half of the sites, the DORIS horizontal velocities differ from the global plate models by less than 2–3 mm yr –1 . For five of the sites (Arequipa, Dionysos/Gavdos, Manila and Santiago) with horizontal velocity differences with respect to these models larger than 10 mm yr –1 , comparisons with GNSS estimates show the veracity of the DORIS motions. Vertical motions from the DORIS cumulative solution are compared with the vertical velocities derived from the latest GPS cumulative solution over the time span 1995.0–2014.0 from the University of La Rochelle solution at 31 co-located DORIS-GPS sites. These two sets of vertical velocities show a correlation coefficient of 0.83. Vertical differences are larger than 2 mm yr –1 at 23 percent of the sites. At Thule, the disagreement is explained by fine-tuned DORIS discontinuities in line with the mass variations of outlet glaciers. Furthermore, the time evolution of the vertical time-series from the DORIS station in Thule show similar trends to the GRACE equivalent water height.

Description: In the TOPEX/POSEIDON project, several satellite positioning systems, such as Laser, Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS), and Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) (on an experimental basis), will be used to track the satellite and to provide accurate orbits. Unfortunately, these systems will provide their dedicated tracking-station coordinates and the satellite orbits in different reference frames. Each technique will use, de facto, a different reference frame. In fact, even for the same technique, each group, depending on the hypothesis used in its computation, will use a different reference frame. This problem is not new for geodesists and can be overcome, in large part, but could create trouble for other scientists when they compare or combine different coordinate data sets. The main purpose of this investigation is to determine a consistent terrestrial system for TOPEX/POSEIDON in which all the tracking-station coordinates, all the orbit ephemerides, and all the other station coordinates of specific interest (such as tide gauges) could be expressed. Another issue of this investigation is the provision of reliable information concerning the relationships between all the possible reference frames of interest for th TOPEX/POSEIDON project. To be more explicit, we plan to provide the possible transformation formula between the TOPEX/POSEIDON terrestrial reference frame and the Laser, DORIS, GPS, and other internationally recognized frames such as the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF).