Importance of ocean tidal load corrections for differential InSAR

Creators: DiCaprio, Chrstopher J.; Simons, Mark

Abstract

Large time series of interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements make it possible to detect slow tectonic motions of the Earth's surface on the order of millimeters per year. Here, we illustrate the importance of correcting InSAR data for the effects of ground displacements due to ocean tidal loads (OTL). These loads can cause displacement gradients greater than 3 cm per 100 km, which is larger than the accuracy of InSAR techniques and can be a significant percentage of the measured displacement due to slow tectonic processes. We demonstrate the importance of OTL with predicted displacements from selected regions of tectonic interest.

Additional Information

© 2008 American Geophysical Union. Received 25 August 2008; revised 15 October 2008; accepted 17 October 2008; published 29 November 2008. We thank Duncan Agnew for providing the SPOTL software and assistance in using it, Mathilde Vergnolle for advice on tidal models, and Eric Fielding for providing the wide swath radar geometry. The manuscript was improved by comments from an anonymous reviewer. We are very grateful to Nigel Penna whose detailed comments greatly improved this manuscript. This work is supported in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and NASA grant NNG06GFR47G. This is Caltech Seismological Laboratory Contribution 10002 and Caltech Tectonic Observatory Contribution 83.

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