Determination of solid Earth tide phase lag by satellite observation data

The geopotential variation caused by solid Earth, ocean and atmospheric tides can be estimated from artificial satellite orbit perturbations. It is shown that the total tidal variation in geopotential field derived from satellite tracking data, combined with the recent accurate measurements of ocean tide obtained by Topex/Poseidon and atmospheric tide model, permits the estimates of the solid earth tide phase lags for M2 and K1 constituents (respectively 0.12° and 0.13°). This result agrees rather well with the result 0.16° derived from satellite data by Ray and the constrained theoretical result 0.21° given by Zschau; whereas the results given by gravity tidal methods are rather scattering in the phase lag determination.