Analysis of Seismic Deformation from Global Three-Decade GNSS Displacements: Implications for a Three-Dimensional Earth GNSS Velocity Field

Abstract

With the rapid development of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology, the long-term accumulated GNSS observations of global reference stations have provided valuable data for geodesy and geodynamics studies since the 1990s. Acquiring the precise velocity of GNSS stations is very important for the study of global plate movement, crustal deformation, etc. However, the seismic activities nearby some GNSS observation stations may seriously change the station’s motion trajectory. Therefore, our research was motivated to propose a method allowing for station seismic deformation, and apply it to construct an updated global GNSS velocity field. The main contributions of this work included the following. Firstly, we improved the GNSS data processing procedures and seismic data selection strategies to obtain GNSS coordinate time series with mm-level precision (3–5 and 6–8 mm in the horizontal and vertical, respectively) and information of each site impacted by seismic events, which provides necessary input data for further analysis. Secondly, an Integrated Time Series Method (ITSM) concerning the effect of seismic deformation was proposed to model the station’s nonlinear motion accurately. Distinguished with existing studies, all parameters including seismic relaxation time can be simultaneously estimated by ITSM, which improves the accuracy and reliability of GNSS station velocity significantly. Thirdly, to optimize the ITSM-based model, the influences of seismic relaxation time (a. 0.1 × true, b. 10 × true, c. true), parameterization mode (a. Offset + Velocity, b. Offset + Velocity + PSD, c. Offset + Velocity + PSD + Period), and the Post-Seismic Deformation (PSD) model (a. None, b. Exp, c. Log, d. Exp + Log) on results of GNSS time series analyzing were discussed. The results showed that the fitting accuracy of GNSS displacements was better than 5 mm and 10 mm in the horizontal and vertical, respectively. Finally, the global GNSS station velocity field (referred to as GGV2020 hereafter) was refined by ITSM using global GNSS observations and seismic data during 1990–2020. This not only helps interpret plate tectonic motion, establish and maintain a Dynamic Terrestrial Reference Frame (DTRF) but also contributes to better investigating geodynamic processes. GGV2020 results showed that the accuracy of global velocity was better than 1 mm/a, and the averages of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) were 0.19 mm/a, 0.19 mm/a, and 0.33 mm/a in the north, east, and up direction, respectively. Besides, the RMSE obeys normal distribution. Compared with ITRF2014, there was a difference of about 1–2 mm/a between them due to differences in terms of observation span, processing model, and geodetic technology. Moreover, GGV2020 is expected to enrich and update the existing velocity field products to describe the characteristics of regional crustal movement in more detail, especially in Antarctica.

Time-frequency analysis of differences between coordinates of three permanent GNSS stations in Krakow

“…There are several possible causes for a systematic oscillation observed in the horizontal components of a GNSS permanent station with a period of 75 minutes and variable amplitude. These include tidal deformation of Earth's crust (Baker, 1984;Piras et al, 2009), seismic waves from distant earthquakes causing periodic variations in the position of the GNSS station (Kouba, 2003;Ren et al, 2021), large-scale atmospheric pressure variations associated with weather systems, which can cause periodic variations of the Earth's crust, e.g. (Dach et al, 2011), and instrument-related issues such as thermal expansion or mechanical vibrations in the station antenna, metal structures (Mohamed et al, 2019;Fuhrmann et al, 2021) or microwaveabsorbing materials (Hunegnaw and Teferle, 2022) situated in the direct vicinity of a GNSS receiver antenna or multipath effects due to GNSS signals re ected from objects around the antenna interfering with direct signals from these satellites (Peppa et al, 2019).…”

Forecasting and analysing the GNSS vertical time series with an improved VMD-CXGBoost model

“…The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is an important tool to observe and model geodynamic processes such as plate tectonics and post-glacial rebound (He et al 2017). Over the past 30 years, the continuous accumulation of observations recorded from over 20,000 GNSS stations located worldwide, provide a large data base for research on various topics in earth science (Deng et al 2017;Wu et al 2018;Ren et al 2021). These data can effectively describe the long-term trend and the nonlinear changes caused by geophysical effects (Wang et al 2021).…”