An Analysis of Vertical Crustal Movements along the European Coast from Satellite Altimetry, Tide Gauge, GNSS and Radar Interferometry

Abstract

The main aim of the article was to analyse the actual accuracy of determining the vertical movements of the Earth’s crust (VMEC) based on time series made of four measurement techniques: satellite altimetry (SA), tide gauges (TG), fixed GNSS stations and radar interferometry. A relatively new issue is the use of the persistent scatterer InSAR (PSInSAR) time series to determine VMEC. To compare the PSInSAR results with GNSS, an innovative procedure was developed: the workflow of determining the value of VMEC velocities in GNSS stations based on InSAR data. In our article, we have compiled 110 interferograms for ascending satellites and 111 interferograms for descending satellites along the European coast for each of the selected 27 GNSS stations, which is over 5000 interferograms. This allowed us to create time series of unprecedented time, very similar to the time resolution of time series from GNSS stations. As a result, we found that the obtained accuracies of the VMEC determined from the PSInSAR are similar to those obtained from the GNSS time series. We have shown that the VMEC around GNSS stations determined by other techniques are not the same.