Towards the Realization of the International Height Reference Frame (IHRF) in Argentina

Abstract

This paper describes a practical implementation of the International Height Reference System (IHRS) in Argentina. The contribution deals with the determination of potential values W(P) at five Argentinean stations proposed to be included in the reference network of the International Height Reference Frame (IHRF). All sites are materialized with GNSS stations of the Argentine continuous satellite monitoring network and most of them are included in the SIRGAS Continuously Operating Network. Not all the stations are connected to the National Vertical Reference System 2016 and most of them are near to an absolute gravity station measured with an A10 gravimeter. This paper also discusses the approach for the computation of W(P) at the IHRF stations using the Argentinean geoid model GEOIDE-Ar 16 developed by the Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Argentina together with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Australia using the remove-compute-restore technique and the GOCO05s satellite-only Global Gravity Model. Then, geoid undulations (N) were transformed to height anomalies (ζ) in order to infer W(P) at the stations located on the Earth’s surface. The transformation from N to ζ must be consistent with the hypothesis used for the geoid determination. Special emphasis is made on the standards, conventions and constants applied.