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Published June 28, 2020 | Published
Journal Article Open

Extending the Global Mass Change Data Record: GRACE Follow‐On Instrument and Science Data Performance

Abstract

Since June, 2018, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) is extending the 15-year monthly mass change record of the GRACE mission, which ended in June 2017. The GRACE-FO instrument and flight system performance has improved over GRACE. Better attitude solutions and enhanced pointing performance result in reduced fuel consumption and gravity range rate post-fit residuals. One accelerometer requires additional calibrations due to unexpected measurement noise. The GRACE-FO gravity and mass change fields from June 2018 through December 2019 continue the GRACE record at an equivalent precision and spatiotemporal sampling. During this period, GRACE-FO observed large interannual terrestrial water variations associated with excess rainfall (Central US, Middle East), drought (Europe, Australia), and ice melt (Greenland). These observations are consistent with independent mass change estimates, providing high confidence that no intermission biases exist from GRACE to GRACE-FO, despite the 11-month gap. GRACE-FO has also successfully demonstrated satellite-to-satellite laser ranging interferometry.

Additional Information

GRACE-FO is a partnership between NASA and the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. The twin GRACE-FO spacecraft are operated from the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, under a GFZ contract with the German Aerospace Center. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA. This work represents research carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The preparation of the GFZ contribution to the GRACE-FO Science Data System was funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) under grant 03F0654A. Part of this work described in this paper was carried out at UT-CSR under JPL Contract 1604489. The use of the facilities of the Texas Advanced Computational Center (TACC) is acknowledged. We thank Natthachet Tangdamrongsub and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments. Data Availability Statement. More information about GRACE-FO can be found at https://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov and at https://www.gfz-potsdam.de/en/grace-fo. GRACE and GRACE-FO Level-1 data, Level 2 spherical harmonic gravity coefficients and the Technical Notes TN-13 and TN-14 are available at NASA's PO.DAAC (https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov), and GFZ's ISDC (https://isdc.gfz-potsdam.de/grace-fo-isdc/). All handbooks are available at https://podaac-tools.jpl.nasa.gov/drive/files/allData/gracefo/docs/.

Attached Files

Published - Geophysical_Research_Letters_-_2020_-_Landerer_-_Extending_the_Global_Mass_Change_Data_Record__GRACE_Follow‐On_Instrument.pdf

Files

Geophysical_Research_Letters_-_2020_-_Landerer_-_Extending_the_Global_Mass_Change_Data_Record__GRACE_Follow‐On_Instrument.pdf

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023