Status of Next Generation GRACE Gravity Field Data Products

The Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment was launched on Mar 17, 2002 in order to measure mass flux within the Earth system through its effects on Earth's gravity field. Since that time, using the inter-satellite tracking data between the twin GRACE satellites, monthly gravity field estimates for more than 4 years have been delivered to the user community, and these fields have shown clear evidence of hydrological, oceanographic & glaciological phenomena. The GRACE Science Data System is in the midst of a re-processing activity, focusing on improvements to the background models and processing methodology. This paper describes the status of the new results from the re-processing, including changes to the background models, improvement in the processing, and the resulting error characteristics.