Influence of ocean tidal loading on InSAR offshore areas deformation monitoring

AbstractThe ocean tide can cause the redistribution of the seawater mass, resulting in earth's surface deformation, namely ocean tidal loading (OTL). OTL vertical displacement may reach several centimeters, especially in coastal areas, so its effect in the field of high precision geodesy must be considered. This study concentrates on the influences of OTL on InSAR deformation measurements. We improve the osu.chinasea.2010 regional model and then compare the improved regional model with other regional models. It turns out that the improved regional model can achieve higher precision. Then we use it to replace the offshore part of the global model to generate the present model. We find that the displacement observed by the present model is 2–3 mm larger than that of other models on some sites. Finally, the present model is used to correct the deformation observed by InSAR of Shanghai and Los Angeles. A comparison between the displacements of IGS station with the corrected data shows that the OTL correction can improve the accuracy of InSAR deformation results by about 20%