Indonesian Journal of Geography
Vol 54, No 3 (2022): Indonesian Journal of Geography

Importance of Tropospheric Correction to C-band InSAR Measurements: Application in the 2018 Palu Earthquake

Hidayat Panuntun (Geomatics Laboratory, Department of Earth Technology, Vocational College, Universitas Gadjah Mada)
Leni Sophia Heliani (Department of Geodetic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada)
Wiwit Suryanto (Seismology Research Group, Geophysics, Universitas Gadjah Mada)
Cecep Pratama (Department of Geodetic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada)



Article Info

Publish Date
20 Dec 2022

Abstract

Long-term InSAR-based observations are prone to atmospheric delay interference. The active-phase signals emitted and recorded back by sensors during imaging are easily disturbed by the electron content in the ionospheric layer and the water vapor content in the tropospheric layer. Given that the short wavelength of the C-band used by Sentinel-1 is more sensitive to tropospheric delay than to ionospheric delay, in this work, we utilized InSAR Sentinel-1 data to observe the postseismic deformation that occurred following the 2018 Palu earthquake and to evaluate the effect of tropospheric delay on the estimated interferogram time series. The cloud computation of Looking into Continent from Space with Synthetic Aperture Radar (LiCSAR) and LiCSBAS was used to generate interferograms and analyze the time series. Here the atmospheric delay was modeled by using Generic Atmospheric Correction Online Service (GACOS) and removed from the generated interferograms. Results showed that the annual velocity and cumulative line-of-sight (LOS) displacement were refined by correcting the atmospheric delay. Specifically, by applying GACOS, the standard deviation of the generated interferograms decreased by up to 76.6%. GNSS observations were utilized to verify the improvement due to the removal of tropospheric noise. We found that LOS displacement with GACOS correction better fitted the GNSS observation than LOS displacement without GACOS correction. Therefore, atmospheric correction plays an important role in long-term InSAR-based observations, especially in avoiding any bias in the interpretation of the estimated time series.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

ijg

Publisher

Subject

Earth & Planetary Sciences

Description

Indonesian Journal of Geography ISSN 2354-9114 (online), ISSN 0024-9521 (print) is an international journal of Geography published by the Faculty of Geography, Universitas Gadjah Mada in collaboration with The Indonesian Geographers Association. Our scope of publications includes physical geography, ...