Estimates of Minor Ocean Tide Loading Displacement and Its Impact on Continuous GPS Coordinate Time Series

The site displacement due to ocean tidal loading is regarded as one of the largest uncertainties in precise geodetic positioning measurements, among which the effect of minor ocean tides (MOT), except for the 11 main tidal constituents, are sometimes neglected in routine precise global positioning system (GPS) data processing. We find that MOT can cause large vertical loading displacements with peak-to-peak variations reaching more than 8 mm at coastal/island stations. The impact of MOT on the 24-hour GPS solution is slightly larger than the magnitude of MOT loading itself, with peak-to-peak displacement variation at about 10 mm for the horizontal and 30 mm for the vertical components. We also find that the vertical velocity of all the selected stations in the Southwest Pacific was reduced by more than 10% after considering the MOT effect, while stations with weighted root mean square reduced data account for 62%, 59%, and 36% for the up, east, and north components respectively, in particular for most coastal/island stations. Furthermore, MOT correction could significantly reduce the annual signal of the global stacked east component, the near fortnightly and the long-term periodic signals in the up component. The power of some anomalous harmonics of 1.04 cycle per year is also decreased to some extent. These results further proved the benefits of MOT correction in precise GPS data processing.