Post-processing methods with applications to JPL RL05M GRACE mascon solutions

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission has been quantifying monthly changes in the Earth's gravity field since its launch in 2002. Typically, these monthly gravity changes are solved for in terms of spherical harmonic basis functions. Here, we employ spherical cap mass concentration functions (';mascons'), rather than spherical harmonics, coupled with an optimized system of constraints based on global geophysical models to quantify gravity anomalies. The resulting mass flux solutions are primarily void of the longitudinal striping which plague the standard unconstrained GRACE spherical harmonic solutions. In this presentation, we discuss two classes of improvements to the derived mascon solutions, including scaling the solutions to account for damping of mass via the mascon basis function itself, along with correcting for leakage errors within mascons that span land/ocean boundaries. The latter is particularly important when quantifying mass changes near coastlines, for instance in Greenland, where there are large mass changes along coastal regions.