Review of operational series of Earth Orientation Parameters: Availability, consistency, quality

Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) are used for a broad variety of studies in science as well as in daily live applications, e.g. satellite positioning and navigation. The services of the IAG are generating EOP products in an operational mode based on the space-geodetic techniques GNSS, VLBI, SLR and DORIS. Apart from the EOP products derived from one single technique, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) is responsible for generating combined EOPs. Under the auspice of the IERS, there are combined EOPs with short latency (“rapid”) generated at US Naval Observatory, as well as “final” combined EOP series with a latency of about one month generated at Observatoire de Paris.

We will review the EOP products generated operationally by the IERS and the technique-specific services regarding their availability, latency, completeness, and methods applied during the generation process. Additionally, we will investigate the quality of the existing EOP series and the consistency by conducting cross-comparisons.

A special focus will be put on the VLBI-based EOP products as VLBI is the only space-geodetic technique that can provide also UT1-UTC and corrections to the nutation model. However, not all available VLBI-only EOP products are entering the combined IERS EOP series yet.

As a summary of our investigations, we will identify areas of potential improvements for increasing the availability, quality, consistency and reliability of the EOP products to satisfy the users’ needs.