GRACE-FO Gravity Field Results from JPL to Date, and Their Continuity with GRACE Results

The GRACE Follow-On mission, which launched in late May of 2018, has been successfully continuing the record of global observation of Earth system mass change established by its predecessor mission, GRACE. We here present gravity fields from the GRACE Follow-On mission's first year and a half on orbit, as released and available from JPL to date. We include results from both unconstrained spherical harmonic solutions and constrained mascon solutions, performed approximately monthly. We discuss the data quality and error levels. We also briefly summarize our main methods for calibration and modeling adjustment of data (particularly that from the onboard accelerometers), and discuss our selection of appropriate gravity field solution strategies in light thereof. We also show our best solutions obtained using data from the Laser Ranging Interferometer (LRI), a technical demonstration element of the mission, in place of the usual dual-band microwave ranging data. These are found to achieve comparable solution quality, in consideration of temporal aliasing errors. Finally, we discuss and assess these results in terms of their demonstrated continuity with GRACE.

©2018 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.