Influence of use of different values of tidal parameters h2, l2 on determination of coordinates of SLR stations

Abstract

The paper presents the results of coordinates determination for some satellite laser ranging (SLR) stations in the new ITRF2014 system based on LAGEOS-1 and LAGEOS-2 satellite data. The analysis was conducted in two variants. In the first one, coordinates of the SLR stations were estimated with the use of the nominal values of the tidal parameters: h2 = 0.6078 and l2 = 0.0847 (i.e. the standard International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service recommended values). In the second, coordinates of the SLR stations were calculated with the use of values of the tidal parameters estimated in the author’s previous paper: h2 = 0.6140 and l2 = 0.0876 (determined from the LAGEOS-1 and LAGEOS-2 data). The influence of the tidal parameters changes on the computation of the stations’ coordinates was investigated. The maximum differences (X, Y, Z(Variant 1) — X, Y, Z(Variant 2)) of about 4 mm, were achieved for Z component for Yarragadee (station ID 7090) and Monument Peak (7110) and of about 3 mm for Y component for Yarragadee (7090) and Changchun (7237) stations. All calculations related to determining the satellite orbits and the SLR stations’ coordinates were carried out with the use of the GEODYN II NASA/GSFC software.