Analysis of GRACE's accelerometer scale-factor calibration

In preparing for the Center for Space Research (CSR) Release 6 (RL06) of Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) gravity field models, we evaluate a daily full-matrix scale-factor accelerometer parameterization. This study focused on the analysis of 32 accelerometer parameterization schemes for the calibration of accelerometer measurements. The parameterization sets include skew-symmetric, symmetric and full matrix scale-factors with four different bias parameterizations. We determined that daily full-matrix scale factors, combined with daily (or 3-hourly in the y-axis) constant and linear biases, reduced the striping artifacts by over 0.5 mm geoid height RMS in some months. The largest improvements take place between 2002 and 2005, as well after 2011. This parameterization scheme degrades the GRACE solutions from 2007 to 2010 in a very limited way, and is addressed by other processing strategies in RL06. We demonstrate that the discrepancy of the C₂₀ coefficient in the GRACE solutions compared to Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) data was reduced by a factor of two throughout the 2002-2016 period.