Current Plate Motions Based on Doppler Satellite Observations.
Abstract
About 25 percent of the Doppler observations made on a Navy Navigation Satellite over a ten year period were analyzed to determine the motion of 10 sites on the North American plate and 13 sites on 7 other plates. The computed plate motions were not statistically significant compared with the standard errors of measurement of 1 to 5 cm/yr except for the Australian plate and Pacific plate. The measured motions of these plates are about twice those inferred from geologic records, but are in the proper direction. The Doppler derived a cm/yr northward motion of the African plate is marginally significant; this value is also twice that inferred from geologic records, but the discrepancy is not statistically significant. Processing of the balance of the data on one satellite over the 10 year time interval would improve the accuracy of the determination by about a factor of two, improving the possibility of detecting additional statistically significant motions. Unreasonable altitude changes at most sites are probably due to neglected higher order ionospheric refraction effects on the observations. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1982
- Accession Number
- ADA120534
Entities
People
- C. A. Malyevac
- R. J. Anderle
Organizations
- Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division