Ocean tidal loading affecting precise geodetic observations on Greenland: Error account of surface deformations by tidal gravity measurements

Air-borne and satellite based altimetry are used to monitor the Greenland ice-cap. Since these measurements are related to fiducial sites at the coast, the robustness of the height differences depends on the stability of these reference points. To benefit from the accuracy of these methods on the centimeter level, station corrections regarding the Earth tides and the ocean tidal loading have to be applied.

Models for global corrections esp. for the body tides are available and sufficient, but local corrections regarding the effect of the adjacent shelf area still have to be inferred from additional observations. Near the coast ocean tidal loading causes additional vertical deformations in the order of 1 to 10 cm Therefore, tidal gravity measurements were carried out at four fiducial sites around Greenland in order to provide corrections for the kinematic part of the coordinates of these sites.

Starting in 1993 four stations were occupied on Greenland for a one year record each. The results show the expected strong tidal anomalies due to ocean tidal loading. The loading computations confirmed these observations, but it turned out that with global models only about 50 % of the observed effect can be explained.

This means that at these stations st vertical deformation of up to +/-3.5 cm is not corrected applying these global models.