GRACE Measurements of Mass Variability in the Earth System
Abstract
Monthly gravity field estimates made by the twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites have a geoid height accuracy of 2 to 3 millimeters at a spatial resolution as small as 400 kilometers. The annual cycle in the geoid variations, up to 10 millimeters in some regions, peaked predominantly in the spring and fall seasons. Geoid variations observed over South America that can be largely attributed to surface water and groundwater changes show a clear separation between the large Amazon watershed and the smaller watersheds to the north. Such observations will help hydrologists to connect processes at traditional length scales (tens of kilometers or less) to those at regional and global scales.
Additional Information
© 2004 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 15 April2004; accepted 18 June 2004. We thank M. Rodellfor providing terrestrial water storage output from the GLDAS model, T. Pekker and J. Chen for conversion of the GLDAS output into geopotential coefficients, and W. Bertiger, F. Flechtner, B. Gunter, Z. Kang, G. Kruizinga, P. Nagel, R. Pastor, S. Poole, L. Romans, H.-J. Rim, S.-C. Wu, S. Yoon, and D.-N. Yuan for their vital contributions to the software development, algorithm testing, and data processing required to accomplish these results. Supported by NASA contract NAS5-97213.Attached Files
Supplemental Material - Tapley.SOM.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 52043
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20141121-105248542
- NAS5-97213
- NASA
- Created
-
2014-11-21Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- GALCIT, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences