Estimates of vertical crustal motion derived from differences of TOPEX/POSEIDON and tide gauge sea level measurements

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Abstract
We have computed estimates of the rate of vertical crustal motion from differences of sea level measurements made by the TOPEX/POSEIDON radar altimeter and a globally distributed network of 114 tide gauges. A rigorous error analysis was performed which suggests the accuracy of the estimated vertical rates is approximately 1-2 mm/year for roughly half of the tide gauges, which is sufficiently accurate to detect a variety of geophysical phenomena. While only a cursory analysis of the estimated crustal motion rates was performed, we observed many interesting phenomena including significant uplift at volcanic islands in the Pacific and uplift of 7-9 mm/year along the southwest coast of Alaska. The results reported here will be useful in a variety of geophysical studies, as well as for validation of similar estimates of vertical crustal motion provided by precise geodetic techniques such as SLR, DORIS, GPS, and VLBI.
Year of Publication
2002
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Volume
29
Number of Pages
40-1
Date Published
10/2002
URL
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002GeoRL..29s..40N
DOI
10.1029/2002GL015037
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