ITRF2008 plate motion model

Abstract

The ITRF2008 velocity field is demonstrated to be of higher quality and more precise than past ITRF solutions. We estimated an absolute tectonic plate motion model made up of 14 major plates, using velocities of 206 sites of high geodetic quality (far from plate boundaries, deformation zones and Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) regions), derived from and consistent with ITRF2008. The precision of the estimated model is evaluated to be at the level of 0.3 mm/a WRMS. No GIA corrections were applied to site velocities prior to estimating plate rotation poles, as our selected sites are outside the Fennoscandia regions where the GIA models we tested are performing reasonably well, and far from GIA areas where the models would degrade the fit (Antarctica and North America). Our selected velocity field has small origin rate bias components following the three axis (X, Y, Z), respectively 0.41 ± 0.54, 0.22 ± 0.64 and 0.41 ± 0.60 (95 per cent confidence limits). Comparing our model to NNR‐NUVEL‐1A and the newly available NNR‐MORVEL56, we found better agreement with NNR‐MORVEL56 than with NNR‐NUVEL‐1A for all plates, except for Australia where we observe an average residual rotation rate of 4 mm/a. Using our selection of sites, we found large global X‐rotation rates between the two models (0.016°/Ma) and between our model and NNR‐MORVEL56 of 0.023°/Ma, equivalent to 2.5 mm/a at the Earth surface.