Topography-correlated atmospheric signal mitigation for InSAR applications in the Tibetan plateau based on global atmospheric models

Atmospheric heterogeneity mainly exposes itself as tropospheric-phase delay in Satellite Interferometric Synthetic Aperture radar (InSAR) observations, which smears or even overshadows the deformation component of InSAR measurements. In this study, we estimated performance four Global Models (GAMs), i.e. European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis v5 (ERA5), ERA-Interim (ERA-I), Modern-Era Retrospective analysis Research and Applications v2 (MERRA2) Generic Correction Online Service (GACOS), reduction applications Tibetan plateau, ERA5 is latest GAM released by ECMWF. We demonstrated effectiveness Phase Screen (APS) correction using GAMs more than 700 Sentinel-1 Terrain Observation Progressive Scans interferograms covering two study areas southern (R1) northwest margins (R2) plateau. Topography-correlated signals have been widely observed these interferograms, are most likely due to APS effects. calculated Standard Deviations (SD) Pearson’s Correlation Coefficients (r) between Line Sight measurements topography before after applying correction. The results show that SDs non-deformation from decrease approximately 4 mm around 10 12 originally on average R1 R2, respectively, r reduced below 0.4 0.8 selected interferometric pairs. addition, newly GAM, has similar with GACOS products outperforms other models generally. This suggests GAMs, particularly ERA5, great potential