Abstract
The paper presents the GOP first reprocessing results, which officially contributed to the EPN-repro1 project. It also describes the 15-year GOP cumulative solution providing station coordinates, velocities and their discontinuities over the period of 1996-2011. Repeatabilities estimated from cleaned long-term coordinate time-series reached 1-2 mm and 4-6 mm in horizontal and vertical component, respectively. We then showed the exploitation of GOP reprocessing results in the assessment of the EUREF ITRF2005 densification and the latest ITRS realization, ITRF2008. We identified and confirmed the North-South tilt (≈ 2mas) in the currently available European reference frame based on the EPN cumulative solution updated in GPS week 1600. The study showed a historical development of the tilt and its close relation to a weak velocity datum definition of this realization, which is very important for a long-term datum prediction. Selected EPN station coordinates, velocities and discontinuities of the latest ITRS realization (ITRF2008) were also assessed. Specific problems for some EPN stations were identified in the global reference frame. This emphasized further necessity to check all the stations before their use for datum definition for regional densifications.
Highlights
The EUREF (EUropan REference Frame, http://www.euref-iag.org) is one of the subcommisions for regional reference frames of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG)
The velocity estimation should not be teoretically affected if discontinuities are correctly setup and only velocities could provide a datum for the prediction of coordinates over a period of 3-6 years later
The IGS-repro1, which was a basis for a global GNSS contribution to the ITRF2008, didn’t provide the best solutions for at least the following cases: (1) for stations with missing data when compared to their official validity within the EPN or, opposite, stations with data excluded from this period (2) for stations which discontinuties were not properly handled and, the station can not be considered as fiducial for this period or later
Summary
The EUREF (EUropan REference Frame, http://www.euref-iag.org) is one of the subcommisions for regional reference frames of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG). European terrestrial reference frame (ETRF), which represents a realization of ETRS89, is based on a long-term combination of EPN weekly solutions. Such combination includes the estimation of station coordinate changes per year (later referred as ’velocities’) in addition to reference coordinates at a central epoch. Together with a global terrestrial reference frame (labeled as ITRF), which is maintained by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, IERS [3], European reference frame (ETRF) is established based on densification solutions provided by EPN. In the meantime some LACs of the EPN started regional reprocessing activities in order to provide initial solutions homogeneous over a whole period, i.e. without changes in reference frames, global products, processing strategy or applied models.
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