Abstract
The Global Positioning System (GPS) permanent stations at the equatorial and southern sub-tropical hydrobelts of South America undergo the highest seasonality on the Earth due to hydrological loadings. Fortunately, there are products that account for such variations, although some of them have not been properly evaluated. For instance, global solutions of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) are band-limited to lower frequencies; therefore, comparisons with GPS data must account for such spectral inconsistencies. It is proposed to spatially average 39 GPS sites by applying Gaussian smoothing, which allows comparisons with long-wavelength part of GRACE solutions by Center for Space Research (CSR), GeoForschungszentrum, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Comparisons are also carried out with loadings from Noah-driven Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) and GRACE mass concentration (mascon) solution by Goddard Space Flight Center. Results show that CSR best reduces the variances of the radial displacements considering both spatially filtered (70%) and unfiltered (53%) GPS data covering the period from Jan 2010 to Dec 2015. However, GLDAS-Noah underestimates the amplitudes of vertical loadings, which might be due to unmodeled inland water and groundwater storages. While acknowledging that a denser distribution of GPS stations is needed, the findings still shed light on the quality of the global hydrological loading products based on GRACE and GLDAS datasets, which might be of interest to the respective science teams.
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Acknowledgements
Vagner G. Ferreira acknowledges the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41574001). Zhiqiang Liu is thankful to the support provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41604018) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2019B17514). The authors are grateful to the three GRACE processing centers (CSR, GFZ, and JPL) for providing the GRACE Level 2 products as well as NASA’s GSFC for providing the mason solution. The Nevada Geodetic Laboratory (NGL) for preprocessed GPS data, the Global Geophysical Fluids Center of the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) for distributing the atmospheric and oceanic loading fields, and NASA’s Earth Science portal for the GLDAS-Noah data are also appreciated for the excellent work. We also would like to express our gratitude to the two reviewers and the Editor Dr. Lóránt Földváry for the valuable comments and suggestions.
Funding
This research was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant Nos. 41574001 and 41604018, and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Grant No. 2019B17514.
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Conceptualization and methodology, VGF, PY, and CIK; validation, ASM and LYH; formal analysis and investigation, VGF, ZL, HCM, ASM and LYH; writing-original draft preparation, VGF; writing-review and editing, VGF, ZL, HCM, PY, CIK, ASM and LYH.
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Appendix: Complementary figures
Appendix: Complementary figures
Figures 10 and 11 show the same information as in Figs. 5 and 6; however, as time-series plots for a better visualization of the temporal evolution of different radial displacement products.
Displays the same information as in Fig. 5, however, as time series plots. The curves show the observed time series of GPS-observed radial displacement anomalies (i.e., their respective mean values were removed) from Jan 2010 to Dec 2015 indicated by the blue curves, and the filtered GPS-observed radial displacement anomalies using Eq. (1) depicted by the red curves. Reduction in variance of radial displacements and Spearman’s (rank) correlation coefficient between observed displacements (blue) and the filtered ones (red) are inserted in the respective sub-plots for each station. The set of stations within Amazon, Tocantins, La Plata, and São Francisco are BOAV-SAGA, IMPZ-TOPL, BRAZ-UNRO, and ALAR-PEPE, respectively. For the location of these stations, please refer to Fig. 1. (Color figure online)
Displays the same information as in Fig. 6, however, as time series plots. The curves show the radial displacements based on CSR (black curve), GFZ (red curve), JPL (blue curve), GLDAS (green curve), and GSFC (margent curve) harmonic solutions. For the convenience of the readers, the spatially filtered GPS radial displacements are presented hereto (cyan curve). (Color figure online)
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Ferreira, V.G., Liu, Z., Montecino, H.C. et al. Reciprocal comparison of geodetically sensed and modeled vertical hydrological loading products. Acta Geod Geophys 55, 23–49 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40328-019-00279-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40328-019-00279-z