Towards GFZ EIGEN-GRACE06S Gravity Field Time Series

GFZ as part of the GRACE Science Data System has processed almost the complete GRACE mission data. The resulting time series of nearly 70 monthly gravity field solutions is called EIGEN-GRACE05S (or RL04 in the SDS nomenclature) and depicts various time-varying mass variation signals in the system Earth such as the continental hydrological cycle, ice mass change in Antarctica and Greenland or the Sumatra Earthquake in December 2004. Because unfortunately, the error level of EIGEN-GRACE05S is still about a factor of 15 above the pre-launch simulated baseline accuracy, we are going to reprocess all data with improved background models and processing standards. The presentation will focus on existing ideas for the improvement of RL05 and their benefits.