GPS buoy and pressure transducer results from the August 1990 Texaco Harvest Oil Platform Experiment

Abstract

The Texaco Harvest Oil Platform Experiment took place August 22–28, 1990, off Point Conception, California. This platform has been designated as the NASA/JPL verification site for the TOPEX radar altimeter, which is to be launched in mid‐1992. The purpose of the experiment was to obtain measurements from GPS and other instrumentation that will be used at the site for the verification activities, and to determine the potential effects of the platform environment on the quality of the measurements. In conjunction with this experiment, a buoy equipped with a GPS receiver was floated in the vicinity of the platform for the purpose of measuring sea‐level change and waves relative to a reference receiver located on the platform. A pressure transducer installed at the site also provided sea‐level change and wave measurements relative to the platform. We present the data collection, processing, and analysis results comparing the GPS‐buoy and pressure transducer data. The GPS‐determined sea‐surface height measurements show 1.3‐cm agreement when compared with transducer‐determined heights taken over the same period of time. Low‐rate (15‐s) data were used to measure the change in sea‐level height due to tides, while high‐rate (1‐s) measurements provided temporal resolution sufficient for determining wave spectra.

Keywords:

• altimeter calibration
• GPS kinematic positioning
• sea level determination
• wave spectra