Assessing Height Variations in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from Time-Varying Gravity Data and Hydrological Model

Abstract

Height variations caused by mass change make an important contribution to the tectonic uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). To study the deformation attributable to hydrological loading and real potential tectonic vertical motion, satellite gravity data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) with data from the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) are adopted to estimate height variations in QTP. Based on spherical harmonic function (SHF) and Green’s function (GF), the results show the trend of height variations is unevenly distributed in the spatial domain. The SHF indicated that the rate in the southwest of the QTP is ~1 mm/year, while the northern and eastern show a subtle decreasing trend, which indicates hydrological loading is not the main cause of the uplift observed with GRACE. The maximum annual amplitude of height variations is ~12 mm, reaching the annual maximum around February to March. The average correlation coefficients of SHF, and GF height variations with GPS heights are 0.70 and 0.82, respectively. Based on cross wavelet transform, it is concluded that there are annual signals between the height variations derived from GPS with GRACE (-FO) and GLDAS. Finally, the tectonic vertical motion in the QTP is given by removing the effect of hydrological loading, which shows most GPS stations are uplifted at a rate of 0.06 mm/year–1.97 mm/year.