Treatment of atmospheric loading in the IERS Conventions

I am currently preparing a proposal for the treatment of atmospheric loading in space-geodetic analysis. The present IERS Conventions do not contain a clear recommendation of how to account for atmospheric loading in the determination of the ITRF as well as in the computation of products giving access to the ITRF. A key question is whether for daily or weekly analyses, the loading should be included at the observation level or whether the inclusion in the reference frame alignment of the solution is sufficient. The answer to this question depends on the statistical properties of the load. Therefore, the statistical properties of the atmospheric load are currently studied on the basis of the ERA40 dataset. First results were presented in a presentation at the Annual Meeting of the European Geoscience Union in Vienna. The presentation is available here.

Further relevant presentation are:

• Plag, H.-P., 2006: Special Bureau for Loading: Potential Role Versus Reality. Invited presentation at the IERS Workshop on GGFC, San Francisco, USA, December 5-6, 2006. Presentation available as pdf.
• Plag, H.-P., 2006: Improving observations and interpretation of changes in Earth's shape: Present and future Contributions of the GGFC. Invited presentation at the IERS Workshop on GGFC, San Francisco, USA, December 5-6, 2006. Presentation available as pdf.
• Plag, H.-P., 2006: The Global Geodetic Observing System and the Global Geophysical Fluid Center, Invited presentation at the IERS Workshop on GGFC, San Francisco, USA., December 5-6, 2006. Presentation available as pdf.

The ultimate goal of the project is to provide a detailed and easily applicable algorithm for the inclusion of atmospheric loading in the Conventions.