Sea Level in the British Isles: Combining Absolute Gravimetry and Continuous GPS to Infer Vertical Land Movements at Tide Gauges

Abstract

The current terrestrial reference frame, current global GPS products and current precise GPS processing techniques, limit the determination of accurate, long-term, vertical station velocities from continuous GPS measurements on a global scale. Several authors have reported biases in their vertical station velocities determined from continuous GPS when compared to alternative geodetic methods. It has been argued that until these problems have been resolved, the study of relative land and sea level rates on regional scales is the only way to investigate vertical land movements at tide gauges co-located with continuous GPS. In the UK, we have been operating a network of continuous GPS and absolute gravimetry stations for the purpose of determining vertical land movements at tide gauges for almost ten years. This network consists often continuous GPS stations and three absolute gravimetry stations, all of which are either co-located or close to tide gauges. In this paper, we compare vertical land movements obtained from both geodetic methods with estimates of vertical land movements from high quality, independent geological and geophysical evidence, and derive a GPS-specific bias for which the estimates of vertical land movements from all continuous GPS stations are corrected. Based on recently published mean sea level trends by the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level, we estimate a change in sea level, de-coupled from vertical land movements, for the British Isles.