A New Method for InSAR Stratified Tropospheric Delay Correction Facilitating Refinement of Coseismic Displacement Fields of Small-to-Moderate Earthquakes

Abstract

Focusing on stratified tropospheric delay correction in the small-amplitude coseismic displacement field of small-to-moderate earthquakes (<Mw 6.5), we develop a Simple-Stratification-Correction (SSC) approach based on the empirical phase-elevation relationship and spatial properties of the troposphere, via an equal-size window segmentation. We validate our SSC method using 23 real earthquakes that occurred from January 2016 to May 2021 with a moment magnitude (Mw) ranging from 4.5 to 6.5. We conclude that SSC performs well according to the amount of reduction in semi-variance and the root-mean-square value. This method primarily focuses on stratification delay correction; thus, it is especially useful in regions with complex terrain, while it can mitigate partial large-scale turbulence signals. We investigate three parameters that are empirically setup in the correction working flow and inspect their optimal settings, when implementing SSC for quick response after earthquake. Our method is ready to be integrated into an operational InSAR processing chain to produce a reliable atmospheric phase screen map, which can also serve as an auxiliary product to quickly and timely quantify stratification delays in coseismic interferograms. Through improved accuracy of the coseismic displacement field, the focal mechanism could be better constrained to facilitate the building and expansion of the geodesy-based earthquake catalogue.