Scientific Computation Platform for Geophysical Geodesy

Earth Tide, Load Effect and Monitoring computation

The basic principles, main formulas and important methods of geodesy on the deforming Earth have been included in ETideLoad4.5 to popularize and improve higher education. Multi-source heterogeneous monitoring variations can be deeply fused and assimilated by using rigorous constrains of geodesy and solid geodynamics to realize the collaborative monitoring of heterogeneous geodesy, so as to improve the science and technology of geodesy, and consolidate the geodetic application.



ETideLoad4.5 has five subsystems, which includes computation of various tidal effects on various geodetic variations, processing and analysis on non-tidal geodetic variation time series, approaching of load deformation field from heterogeneous data, CORS/InSAR collaborative monitoring and ground stability estimation as well as editing, calculating and visualization for geodetic data files.

ETideLoad4.5 adopts the scientific uniform numerical standards and analytic compatible geophysical algorithms to compute various tidal and non-tidal effects on various geodetic variations outside the solid Earth, approaches accurately the global or regional load deformation field from surface load observations such as atmosphere, sea level, soil water, lakes, and glaciers, and then monitor collaboratively the land water, temporal gravity field, geological environment and ground stability variations by deep fusing of heterogeneous geodetic and surface load observations.

Scientific goals of ETideLoad4.5

(1) Using the consistent geophysical models and uniform numerical standards, and constructing analytic compatible geodetic and geodynamic algorithms, compute the various tidal and non-tidal effects on various geodetic variations and then compute and approach accurately global or regional surface load deformation field.

(2) Strictly according to the principles of geodesy and solid geodynamics, constrain and assimilate the deep fusion of multi-source heterogeneous geodetic and surface load observations to realize the collaborative monitoring of land water, temporal gravity field, geological environment, and ground stability variations.

(3) Provide a set of scientific and practical geodetic geodynamic computation tools for construction of heterogeneous spatiotemporal geodetic frames, and deep fusion of heterogeneous Earth observations, collaborative monitoring of multi-geotechnologies, computation of solid Earth deformation, monitoring of surface hydrology environment, and surveying of geological disasters.

ETideLoad4.5 package download

ETideLoad4.5 package download

Updated in May 21, 2023

ETideLoad4.5 User Reference.pdf
41.39MBDownload
ETideLoad4.5_win64en.exe
680.0MBDownload
ETideLoad4.5_win64en.2
591.1MBDownload
ETideLoad4.5en help.chm
91.02MBDownload
Geophysical models and numerical standards in ETideLoad4.5.pdf
899.47KBDownload
Complete computation processes of high-resolution regional load deformation field time series.pdf
3.48MBDownload
Heterogeneous collaborative monitoring process of groundwater variations and load deformation fi.pdf
3.09MBDownload

✍ Please download ETideLoad4.5_win64en.exe and ETideLoad4.5_win64en.2 together into a folder before installing. If the Windows system security software isolates the file ETideLoad4.5_win64en.exe, please find the file and restore the trust.









Geodetic features and strengths

(1) Using the scientific uniform numerical standards and analytic compatible geophysical algorithms, compute accurately the Earth tidal, ocean tidal, and surface atmosphere tidal, permanent tidal, polar motions and geocentric motion effects on various geodetic variations, and forecast various tidal effects anytime and anywhere.

(2) Approach global or regional load deformation field from surface load observations such as atmosphere, sea level, soil water, lakes, rivers, glaciers, and snow, and then collaboratively monitor the land water and temporal gravity field by deep fusing of heterogeneous geodetic and surface load observations.

(3) Construct regional uniform spatiotemporal monitoring datum frames with high robustness to fuse the CORS, InSAR, and other geodetic variations. Propose the criteria of the ground stability based on temporal geodetic field to realize quantitative monitoring of the ground stability spatiotemporal variations.

Geophysical models and numerical standards

ETideLoad4.5 is mainly based on the geophysical models and numerical standards recommended by IERS Conventions (2010). You can update them by the program [geophysical models and numerical standards settings]. These geophysical models and numerical standards are stored in file form in the folder of C:\ETideLoad4.5_win64en.

Geophysical models and numerical standards in ETideLoad4.5 mainly include the surface atmosphere tidal load spherical harmonic coefficient model, ocean tidal load spherical harmonic coefficient model, Earth’s Load Love numbers, IERS Earth orientation parameter time series, geocentric motion parameter time series, ocean tidal constituent harmonic parameters grid model, JPL Moon and Planetary Ephemeris DE405, corrections coefficients of frequency dependence on Love numbers, Desai ocean pole tide coefficients, and center of mass correction coefficients for the ocean tide.

Geodetic variations agreed in ETideLoad4.5

Geodetic variation in ETideLoad is defined as the difference between the geodetic quantity at the current epoch time and the mean of the quantities over a period or the difference between the geodetic quantity at the current epoch time and the geodetic quantity at a certain reference epoch time. The geodetic quantity may be a geodetic observation or a geodetic parameter, and the geodetic variation refers to the difference in the geodetic quantity with time.

✋ Type and unit of the geodetic variations

(1) Height anomaly or geoidal height variation in the unit of mm, ground gravity or gravity disturbance variation in the unit of μGal, and ground tilt or vertical deflection variation (vector) in the unit of mas namely 0.001ʺ.

(2) Ground horizontal displacement in the unit of mm, ground radial displacement namely ground ellipsoidal height variation in the unit of mm, and ground normal or orthometric height variation in the unit of mm.

(3) Gravity gradient variation and tangential gravity gradient vector variation in the unit of 10μE for global case, as well as in the unit of mE for regional case.

(4) External (outside the Earth) geopotential perturbation in the unit of 0.1m²/s², gravity perturbation in the unit of μGal, and gravity gradient perturbation in the unit of 10μE.

(5) Land equivalent water height variation (EWH) in the unit of cm, sea level variation in unit of cm, ocean tidal height in unit of cm, and atmosphere variation in unit of hPa (mbar).

✋ The geodetic variation vectors

(1) Ground tilt or vertical deflection variation vector (SW). The first component points to the south direction, and the second component points to the west direction, which forms a right-handed rectangular coordinate system with the ground gravity direction. This coordinate system is a natural coordinate system.

(2) Ground horizontal displacement vector (EN). The first component points to the east direction, and the second component points to the north direction, which forms a right-handed rectangular coordinate system with the ground radial displacement direction.

(3) Tangential gravity gradient variation vector (NW). The first component points to the north direction, and the second component points to the west direction, which forms a right-handed rectangular coordinate system with the gravity gradient variation direction (radial).

(4) The harmonic parameters of the tidal constituent. The first component is the prograde amplitude for cos(argument), and the second component is the retrograde amplitude for sin(argument).

Geodetic time series in ETideLoad4.5 format

The geodetic variation time series files adopt the ETideLoad own format, which include the ground geodetic variation time series file, geodetic site variation record time series file, geodetic network observation record time series file, variation (vector) grid time series files, and spherical harmonic coefficient (Stokes coefficient) model time series files.

(1) The ground geodetic variation time series

A ground geodetic variation time series file can store the time series data of several kinds of variations on a certain site, a certain baseline or route, and the sampling epochs (here, the epoch is an instantaneous time) of these variations are the same. Such as the CORS station coordinate solution time series, solid tide station observation or analysis result time series, GNSS baseline solution time series, etc.

(2) The geodetic site variation record time series

A geodetic site variation record time series file can store the time series data of one kind of variations for a group of geodetic sites. Such as the station coordinate time series for the CORS network, benchmark height time series for the leveling network, observation time series for the tide station network, and InSAR monitoring time series, etc.

(3) The geodetic network observation record time series

A geodetic network observation record time series file can store the variation record time series of the baseline component for the CORS network, the variation record time series of the height difference for the leveling network, or the variation record time series of the gravity difference for the gravity control network.

(4) The variation grid time series for geodetic field

A group of variation grid time series files is composed of a series of numerical grid model files of one kind of variation (vector), and the seventh attribute of the header in each grid file is agreed to be the sampling epoch time. Such as the grid time series of the land equivalent water height, sea level variation, and the grid time series of various regional load deformation field or temporal gravity field, etc.

(5) The spherical harmonic coefficient model time series

A group of spherical harmonic coefficient model time series files can store the time series of the spherical harmonic coefficient (Stokes’ coefficient) models of the global surface load variations, global load deformation field, or temporal global gravity field.

The file header occupies one row and consists of three attributes, namely the geocentric gravitational constant GM(×10¹⁴m³/s²), equatorial radius of the Earth a(m), and sampling epoch time (in ETideLoad format).

GM,a are the scale parameters of the model. Here, the surface harmonic functions in the spherical harmonic coefficient model are defined on the spherical surface whose radius is equal to the semi-major axis a of the Earth.