GOCE Gravity fields established by the Celestial Mechanics Approach
Abstract
The Celestial Mechanics Approach (CMA) was generalized to accept not only GPS- and K-Band-observations, but also the gradiometer Level 2 observables of the GOCE mission. The gradiometer observable is modeled as a linear function of the gravity field parameters and the parameters of a piece-wise linear function, which absorbs the deficiencies of the band-limited gradiometer observable including its once-, twice-, etc. per rev biases. The spacing of successive piecewise linear (and continuous) functions is typically of the order of one to few minutes. The piecewise linear functions have to be defined in a way not to absorb the gravity signal in the measurement bandwidth of the GOCE gradiometer observable. The resulting gravity fields are by construction independent of the underlying a priori gravity field. We analyze about six months of GOCE level 2 data and generate (a) GPS-only solutions, (b) gradiometer-only solutions based on the three diagonal elements of the gravity tensor, (c) combinations of solutions (a) and (b), and (d) combinations of the solutions of type (c) with static GRACE solutions, which were generated with the CMA, as well. Currently, for proof of concept purposes, the gravity fields are limited to degree n=160. Our analysis clearly reveals the spectrally resolved contributions of the individual solution types mentioned on the combined solutions.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AGUFM.G43A0746M
- Keywords:
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- 1214 GEODESY AND GRAVITY / Geopotential theory and determination