Precise coseismic displacements from the GPS variometric approach using different precise products: Application to the 2008 MW 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake

The Global Positioning System (GPS) variometric approach has emerged as an attractive alternative to traditional well-developed positioning techniques including relative positioning and precise point positioning. Previous studies have demonstrated the capability of the variometric approach to retrieve coseismic displacements at centimeter-level precision, in a real-time manner using only readily available broadcast ephemeris. This study presents the first results comparing the performance of the variometric approach by using a variety of precise satellite orbit and clock products. Totally six kinds of products are included in our evaluation, namely the broadcast, IGS (International GNSS Service) ultra-rapid (predicted), ultra-rapid (observed), rapid, final (30-s clock) and CODE (Center for Orbit Determination in Europe) final (5-s clock) products. Static and dynamic experiments are conducted using 1-Hz GPS data covering a relatively large area in China during the 2008 Wenchuan MW 7.9 earthquake. After removing the linear trend, the displacements using broadcast, ultra-rapid (predicted), ultra-rapid (observed) and rapid products reach nearly equivalent precisions at centimeter level. By using final and CODE final products, the precision of displacements can be significantly improved from 1.9–2.0 cm to 0.4–0.7 cm horizontally, and from 6.0–6.2 cm to 1.0–1.7 cm vertically for the dynamic experiments. The displacements using the CODE final products achieve the best precision, improved by more than 40% compared to those using the IGS final products. With the availability of IGS high-rate real-time precise products, this approach is promising to capture coseismic displacements more precisely in real time, which is crucial for earthquake and tsunami early warning.