A 10-Year Comparison of Water Levels Measured with a Geodetic GPS Receiver versus a Conventional Tide Gauge

Larson, Kristine M.; Ray, Richard D.; Williams, Simon D.P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4123-4973. 2017 A 10-Year Comparison of Water Levels Measured with a Geodetic GPS Receiver versus a Conventional Tide Gauge. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 34 (2). 295-307. 10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0101.1

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Text © Copyright 2017 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page 2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyrights@ametsoc.org. jtech-d-16-0101%2E1.pdf - Published Version Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract/Summary

A standard geodetic GPS receiver and a conventional Aquatrak tide gauge, collocated at Friday Harbor, Washington, are used to assess the quality of 10 years of water levels estimated from GPS sea surface reflections. The GPS results are improved by accounting for (tidal) motion of the reflecting sea surface and for signal propagation delay by the troposphere. The RMS error of individual GPS water level estimates is about 12 cm. Lower water levels are measured slightly more accurately than higher water levels. Forming daily mean sea levels reduces the RMS difference with the tide gauge data to approximately 2 cm. For monthly means, the RMS difference is 1.3 cm. The GPS elevations, of course, can be automatically placed into a well-defined terrestrial reference frame. Ocean tide coefficients, determined from both the GPS and tide gauge data, are in good agreement, with absolute differences below 1 cm for all constituents save K1 and S1. The latter constituent is especially anomalous, probably owing to daily temperature-induced errors in the Aquatrak tide gauge.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0101.1
ISSN:	0739-0572
Additional Keywords:	Instrumentation/sensors; Satellite observations
Date made live:	31 Jan 2017 16:13 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/516093

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