Asthenospheric anelasticity effects on ocean tide loading in the East China Sea region observed with GPS

Anelasticity may decrease the shear modulus of the asthenosphere by 8–10 % at semi-diurnal tidal periods compared with the reference 1 s period of seismological Earth models. We show that such anelastic effects are likely to be significant for ocean tide loading displacement at the M2 tidal period around the East China Sea. By comparison with tide gauge observations, we establish that NAO99Jb is the most accurate numerical ocean tide model in this region, and that related errors in the predicted M2 vertical ocean tide loading displacements will be 0.2–0.5 mm. In contrast, GPS observations on the Ryukyu Islands (Japan), with uncertainty 0.2–0.3 mm, show discrepancies of over 1.5 mm with respect to ocean tide loading displacements predicted using the purely elastic radial Preliminary Reference Earth Model. We show that the use of an anelastic PREM-based Earth model reduces these discrepancies to no more than 0.8 mm, which is of the same order as the sum of the remaining errors due to uncertainties in the ocean tide model and the GPS observations. Use of a regional Earth model based on the laterally-varying S362ANI, with or without further empirical tuning, results in minor additional improvements in fit.