Higher-order ionospheric effects on the GPS reference frame and velocities

We describe how GPS time series are influenced by higher-order ionospheric effects over the last solar cycle (1995-2008) and examine implications for geophysical studies. Using 14 years of globally reprocessed solutions, we demonstrate the effect on the reference frame. Including second- and third-order ionospheric terms causes up to 10 mm difference in the smoothed transformation to the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) 2005, with the Z translation term dominant. Scale is also slightly affected, with a change of up to ∼0.05 ppb. After transformation to ITRF2005, residual effects on vertical site velocities are as high as 0.34 mm yr -1. We assess the effect of the magnetic field model on the second-order term and find a time-varying difference of 0-2 mm in the Z translation. We also assess the effect of omitting the third-order term. We find that while the second-order term is responsible for almost all the Z translation effects, it is the combination of the second- and third-order terms that causes the effect on scale. Comparison of our GPS reprocessing with ITRF2005 suggests that GPS origin rates may vary with time period. For example, we find Z translation rates of -0.82 ± 0.17 mm yr -1 for 1995-2008 and 0.17 ± 0.24 mm yr -1 for 1995-2005. If GPS were to contribute to origin rate definition for future ITRFs, higher-order ionospheric corrections would need to be applied due to their effect on translation parameters during solar maximum. Copyright 2010 by the American Geophysical Union.