Please find hereafter a message from the IERS Analysis Coordinator, Markus Rothacher. Please excuse if you receive the message more than once because you are listed in various email exploders. ********************************************************************** Dear Colleagues, let me give a short summary of the present status of the IERS combination activities, namely the - IERS Long Time Series (for ITRF2004 and IERS CPP) - IERS CPP routine generation of weekly SINEX files 1. IERS Long Time Series --------------------- The "CALL FOR LONG TIME SERIES OF "WEEKLY" SINEX FILES for ITRF2004 and a supplementation of the IERS Combination Pilot Project" was disseminated in December 2004 with a deadline of February 28, 2005, for solution submissions by Technique/Analysis Centers (see e-mail from IERS Central Bureau of December 17, 2004 for the original call). Until now the following long time series have been submitted: ITRF2004/DORIS/IGN - 1254 files from 003/1993 to 361/2004 ITRF2004/DORIS/INA - 610 files from 292/1992 to 165/2004 ITRF2004/GPS/GFZ - 309 files from 003/1993 to 361/2004 ITRF2004/GPS/IGS - 468 files from 021/1996 to 361/2004 ITRF2004/GPS/SIO - 1445 files from 020/1991 to 361/2004 ITRF2004/SLR/ILRS - 1216 files from 362/1992 to 361/2004 ========================================================= Total 4200 files ========================================================= All series are available at the IERS Central Bureau Data Management and Information System http://iers1.bkg.bund.de/info/listFileITRF2004.php and soon at IGN as well. The meta data for the individual files stored in the IERS Central Bureau data base can be obtained by clicking at the symbol in the column "Meta Data". We still miss one very important time series, namely the official IVS combined session solutions. This series is being generated these days and I very much hope that it will become available very soon. Even if it took (or still takes) some time to get this series from the IVS, I think that it is extremely important to have all the individual technique services responsible for their technique-specific combined solutions. The DORIS solution available is not yet an official combined IDS solution, but progress is made there as well. At present the phase of feedback to the contributors of the series started. The next important dates will be (see also original call): April 27, 2005: IERS CPP Meeting in Vienna to discuss the next steps. April 28, 2005: IERS DB Meeting. May 15, 2005: Submission of ITRF solutions by the ITRF CCs, start of comparison and validation phase August 5, 2005: Final ITRF2004 solution ready after comparisons and validations; various results available from the IERS CPP. Presentation of the new ITRF2004 and the IERS CPP results at the IAG Scientific Assembly 2005 (Cairns, Australia) October 2005: IERS Workshop 2005; evaluation of the CPP and discussions concerning the transitions to new IERS products; IERS Directing Board Meeting for decisions. The ITRF Combination Centers (CC) are responsible to generate the ITRF2004 solutions. I would like very much that the long time series are also studied by the IERS CRCs and those IERS CPP groups, that proposed to study inter-technique combination. We need all the expertise available to study combination strategies, datum definition approaches, local tie assessments, weighting schemes, etc. 2. IERS CPP Routine Solutions -------------------------- The data base web pages for the IERS CPP routine SINEX solutions have also been changed and improved, see http://iers1.bkg.bund.de/info/listFileCPP.php . The present status of the submissions from the various techniques is (starting end of February 2004): IGS : Last submission for 2005 day 072 ILRS : Last submission for 2005 day 079 IVS : Last submission for 2005 day 062 DORIS: Last submission for 2005 day 051 All the IERS CPP solutions are presently submitted within the deadline given by the project guidelines (8 weeks for the intra-technique combination). All the groups that were answering the Call for the IERS CPP and the IERS Combination Research Centers (CRCs) should get involved into processing of these SINEX files (together and complemented by the data of the IERS Long Time Series solutions). Various strategies should be tested on how to get on a routine basis IERS products (mainly EOPs, but also station coordinates for monitoring, etc.). EOPs from such routine will eventually replace (or complement) the present C04 and Bulletin A series. A document concerning a draft version of future IERS products will be part of the next e-mail. This and the e-mail by Jim Ray will certainly be the focus points for a thorough discussion of the next steps. With both types of solutions, long time series and routine products available, there is a lot of material available to study the strategies for the generation of a future set of IERS products. With best regards, Markus