Combination procedure for length-of-day time series according to the noise frequency behavior

Abstract.

 Length-of-day (LOD) estimates from seven Global Positioning System (GPS) and three satellite laser ranging (SLR) analysis centers were combined into an even-spaced time series for a 27-month period (1996–1998). This time series was compared to the multi-technique Earth-orientation-parameter (EOP) combined solution (C04) derived at the Central Bureau of the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS/CB). Due to inhomogeneities in the different series derived from the various techniques (time, length, quality, and spatial resolution), the concept of a combined solution is justified. The noise behavior in LOD for different techniques varies with frequency; the data series were divided into frequency windows after removing both biases and trends. Different weight factors were assigned in each window, discriminating by technique, and produced one-technique combined solutions. Finally, these one-technique combined solutions were combined to obtain the final multi-technique solution. The LOD combined time series obtained by the present method based on the frequency windows combined series (FWCS) is very close to the IERS C04 solution. It could be useful to generate a new LOD reference time series to be used in the study of high-frequency variations of Earth rotation.