Mitigation of atmospheric phase delays in InSAR data, with application to the eastern California shear zone

Abstract

We present a method for estimating radar phase delays due to propagation through the troposphere and the ionosphere based on the averaging of redundant interferograms that share a common scene. Estimated atmospheric contributions can then be subtracted from the radar interferograms to improve measurements of surface deformation. Inversions using synthetic data demonstrate that this procedure can considerably reduce scatter in the time series of the line-of-sight displacements. We demonstrate the feasibility of this method by comparing the interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) time series derived from ERS-1/2 and Envisat data to continuous Global Positioning System data from eastern California. We also present results from several sites in the eastern California shear zone where anomalous deformation has been reported by previous studies, including the Blackwater fault, the Hunter Mountain fault, and the Coso geothermal plant. Key Points We present a new method to mitigate atmospheric phase delays in InSAR data We apply the method to the study of low-amplitude surface deformation We investigate transient deformation in the eastern California shear zone.