Determination of solid Earth tide phase lag by satellite observation data

The geopotential variation caused by solid Earth, ocean and atmospheric tid es can be estimated from artificial satellite orbit perturbations. It is sh own that the total tidal variation in geopotential field derived from satel lite tracking data, combined with the recent accurate measurements of ocean tide obtained by Topex/Poseidon and atmospheric tide model, permits the es timates of the solid earth tide phase lags for MZ and K1 constituents (resp ectively 0. 12 degrees and 0. 13 degrees). This result agrees rather well w ith the result 0. 16 degrees derived from satellite data by Ray and the con strained theoretical result 0.21 degrees given by Zschau; whereas the resul ts given by gravity tidal methods are rather scattering in the phase lag de termination.