Anatomy of the spatiotemporally correlated noise in GNSS station position time series

Abstract

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) enable the determination of station displacements, which are essential to understanding geophysical processes and establishing terrestrial reference frames. Unfortunately, GNSS station position time series exhibit spatially and temporally correlated noise, hindering their contribution to geophysical and geodetic applications. While temporal correlations are commonly accounted for, a strategy for modeling spatial correlations is still lacking. Therefore, this study proposes a diagnosis of the spatial correlations of the white and flicker noise components of GNSS position time series, using the global Nevada Geodetic Laboratory dataset. This analysis reveals different spatial correlation patterns for white and flicker noise and the superposition of three distinct spatial correlation regimes (large-scale, short-scale and station-specific), providing insight into the noise sources. We show, in particular, that about 70% of flicker noise corresponds to large-scale variations possibly attributable to orbit modeling errors. We also evidence an increase in the spatial correlations of white noise at distances below 50 km, most pronounced in the vertical component, where 50% of the white noise appears to be driven by short-scale effects—possibly tropospheric delay mismodeling.