Daily estimates of the Earth's pole position with the global positioning system

Abstract

Daily estimates of the Earth's pole position have been obtained with measurements from a worldwide network of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, obtained during the three week GIG'91 experiment in January–February, 1991. For this short‐term study, the GPS based polar motion series agrees with the other space based geodetic techniques (Very Long Baseline Interferometry and Satellite Laser Ranging) to ∼0.4 mas rms, after the removal of mean biases of order 1–3 mas. The small error in day‐to‐day variability is not sensitive to the fiducial strategy used, nor are fiducial sites even necessary for monitoring high frequency pole position variability. The small biases indicate that the applied reference frames of the three geodetic techniques are nearly aligned, that the GPS fiducial errors are small, and that systematic errors in GPS are also small (of order 5 ppb). A well determined reference frame is necessary for monitoring the long‐term stability of polar motion and for separating it from other long‐term signals such as tectonic motion and internal systematic errors.