GSFC Regional Gravity Solutions From GRACE: Techniques and Results

The GRACE mission is designed to monitor mass flux on the Earth's surface at monthly intervals with high spatial resolution. The monthly global spherical harmonic gravity fields contained in the GRACE Level 2 products largely deliver on this promise, but are not problem free. At GSFC we have concentrated on making regional gravity solutions with the goal of avoiding problems inherent to global solutions such as aliasing. We attempt to mitigate these problems by making solutions based solely on GRACE intersatellite range rate data which overfly the region of interest. Various aspects of these solutions will be discussed including: rationale and mathematical basis as well as techniques and results.