We describe the computation of the first Australian quasigeoid model to include error estimates as a function of location that have been propagated from uncertainties in the EGM2008 global model, land and altimeterderived gravity anomalies and terrain corrections. The model has been extended to include Australia's offshore territories and maritime boundaries using newer datasets comprising an additional ∼280,000 land gravity observations, a newer altimeter-derived marine gravity anomaly grid, and terrain corrections at 1 × 1 resolution. The error propagation uses a remove-restore approach, where the EGM2008 quasigeoid and gravity anomaly error grids are augmented by errors propagated through a modified Stokes integral from the errors in the altimeter gravity anomalies, land gravity observations and terrain corrections. The gravimetric quasigeoid errors (one sigma) are 50-60 mm across most of the Australian landmass, increasing to ∼100 mm in regions of steep horizontal gravity gradients or the mountains, and are commensurate with external estimates.
A one arc-minute resolution gravimetric quasigeoid model has been computed for New Zealand, covering the region 25°S to 60°S and 160°E to 170°W. It was calculated by Wong-Gore modified Stokes integration using the removecompute-restore technique with the EIGEN-6C4 global gravity model as the reference field. The gridded gravity data used for the computation consisted of 40,677 land gravity observations, satellite-altimetry-derived marine gravity anomalies, historical shipborne marine gravity observations and, importantly, approximately one million new airborne gravity observations. The airborne data were collected with the specific intention of reinforcing the shortcomings of the existing data in areas of rough topography inaccessible to land gravimetry and in coastal areas where shipborne gravimetry cannot be collected and altimeter-derived gravity anomalies are generally poor. The new quasigeoid has a nominal precision of ±48 mm on comparison to GPS-levelling data, which is approximately 14 mm less than its predecessor NZGeoid09.
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