Study on tidal gravity observations obtained at stations Zhongshan and Changcheng, Antarctic

Abstract

Based on the international tidal gravity reference values at station Wuhan, the tidal gravity parameters, including the amplitude factors and phase differences are determined accurately by using the observations with three La-Coste-Romberg (LCR) gravimeters (G-589, ET-20 and ET-21) at stations Zhongshan and Changcheng in the Antarctic, respectively. The standard deviations of the determined amplitude factors of the main tidal waves are better than 0.5%. The amplitude of each tidal wave observed at station Zhongshan is much less than that of the same wave at station Changcheng. The differences of amplitude factors in the diurnal band (O1) at these two stations are less than 7% while those in the semi-diurnal band (M2) are larger than 40%. The influences of meteorology factors, such as atmospheric pressure and temperature, on the tidal gravity observations are very obvious. The oceanic loading effects on the tidal gravity are also very prominent. It is found that the amplitude of the final residual vector of every tidal wave reduces significantly after oceanic correction based on the Schwiderski’s global co-tides. However, because the local oceanic loading is not taken into account, the discrepancies of amplitude factors of wave O1 observed at Zhongshan from the corresponding values of theoretical tidal model are about 4%, and 9% at Changcheng.