The European Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer Satellite Mission: Its Impact on Geophysics

Johannessen, Johnny A.; Balmino, G.; Provost, C. Le; Rummel, Reiner; Sabadini, R.; Sünkel, H.; Tscherning, C. C.; Visser, Pieter; Woodworth, Philip L.; Hughes, Chris W.; Legrand, Pascal; Sneeuw, Nico; Pérosanz, F.; Aguirre-Martinez, M.; Rebhan, H.; Drinkwater, Mark R.

doi:10.1023/b:geop.0000004264.04667.5e

Cited by 76 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Today, the annual mean sea surface (MSS) height derived from altimetry is known with millimeter accuracy (e.g., Cazenave et al 2009) in the open ocean. In addition, knowledge of the marine geoid has drastically improved thanks to satellite gravity measurements from the NASA GRACE ) and ESA GOCE (Johannessen et al 2003;Bingham et al 2011;Knudsen et al 2011) missions in the last decade. In turn, the MDT, which is simply the difference between the mean sea surface height (MSS) and the geoid (G) (both referenced to the same ellipsoid as illustrated in Fig.…”

Section: Ocean Dynamic Topographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Improved Estimation of the Dynamic Topography and Ocean Circulation in the High Latitude and Arctic Ocean: The Importance of GOCE

Johannessen¹,

Raj²,

Nilsen³

et al. 2014

Surv Geophys

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The Arctic plays a fundamental role in the climate system and shows significant sensitivity to anthropogenic climate forcing and the ongoing climate change. Accelerated changes in the Arctic are already observed, including elevated air and ocean temperatures, declines of the summer sea ice extent and sea ice thickness influencing the albedo and CO 2 exchange, melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and increased thawing of surrounding permafrost regions. In turn, the hydrological cycle in the high latitude and Arctic is expected to undergo changes although to date it is challenging to accurately quantify this. Moreover, changes in the temperature and salinity of surface waters in the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas may also influence the flow of dense water through the Denmark Strait, which are found to be a precursor for changes in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation with a lead time of around 10 years (Hawkins and Sutton in Geophys Res Lett 35:L11603, 2008). Evidently changes in the Arctic and surrounding seas have far reaching influences on regional and global environment and climate variability, thus emphasizing the need for advanced quantitative understanding of the ocean circulation and transport variability in the high latitude and Arctic Ocean. In this respect, this study combines in situ hydrographical data, surface drifter data and direct current meter measurements, with coupled sea ice-ocean models, radar altimeter data and the latest GOCEbased geoid in order to estimate and assess the quality, usefulness and validity of the new GOCE-derived mean dynamic topography for studies of the ocean circulation and transport estimates in the Nordic Seas and Arctic Ocean.

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Section: Ocean Dynamic Topographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Improved Estimation of the Dynamic Topography and Ocean Circulation in the High Latitude and Arctic Ocean: The Importance of GOCE

Johannessen¹,

Raj²,

Nilsen³

et al. 2014

Surv Geophys

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“…GOCE has been collecting gravity gradients at an altitude of 250 km (Johannesen et al, 2003) from 20092013. The data are obtained in the so-called gradiometer reference frame and rotated to a North-West-Up system by the High-Level Processing facility (Bouman et al, 2008), and it contains 6 independent gradient components.…”

Section: Data Used and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Using ground gravity to improve ice mass change estimation from GOCE gravity gradients in mid-west Greenland

Tscherning

Herceg

2015

Stud Geophys Geod

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Vertical gravity gradient anomalies from the Gravity and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) DIR-3 model have been used to determine gravity anomalies in mid-west Greenland by using Least-Squares Collocation (LSC) and theReduced Point Mass (RPM) method. The two methods give nearly identical results. However, compared to LSC, the RPM method needs less computational time as the number of equations to be solved in LSC equals the number of observations. The advantage of the LSC, however, is the acquired error estimates. The observation periods are winter 2009 and summer 2012. In order to enhance the accuracy of the calculated gravity anomalies, ground gravity data from West Greenland is used over locations where the gravity change resulting from ice mass changes is negligible, i.e. over solid rock. In the period considered, the gravity anomaly change due to changes in ice mass varies from 5 mGal to 4 mGal. It is negative over the outlet glacier Jacobshavn Isbrae, where the mass loss corresponds to a gravity change of approximately 4 mGal. When using only GOCE vertical gravity gradients, the error estimates range from 5 mGal at the coast to 17 mGal over the ice sheet. Introducing the ground gravity data from West Greenland in the prediction reduces the errors to range from 2 to 10 mGal.

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“…The GOCE data will especially improve the standardization of the world geodetic references [Johannessen et al, 2003].…”

Section: The Need For a Dedicated Satellite Altimetry Missionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ocean Gravity Models From Future Satellite Missions

Louis

Lequentrec-Lalancette

Royer

et al. 2010

EoS Transactions

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Over the past 3 decades, satellite altimetry has been a key tool for dynamic ocean studies and for accurately estimating sea surface heights. The geodetic reference surface—the “geoid”—can be approximated as the mean sea surface height of an ocean corrected for dynamic terms such as tides and currents. It is an equipotential surface of the gravity field; and variations of this field are quantified as free‐air anomalies, from which density heterogeneities of the oceanic basement can be inferred. Using such data in combination with other geophysical data, scientists have improved their knowledge of the nature of submarine relief and underlying structures. In solid Earth geophysics, major breakthroughs came from the development of high‐resolution marine gravity models based on closely spaced altimetry profiles collected during the U.S. Navy's Geosat satellite geodetic mission (launched in 1985) and the first version of the European Remote Sensing satellite geodetic mission (ERS 1, launched in 1991). These were combined with other repetitive profiles from the international TOPEX/ POSEIDON satellite (launched in 1992); ERS 1; TOPEX/POSEIDON's successor, Jason (launched in 2001); and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Envisat missions (ERS's successors [see, e.g., Sandwell and Smith, 1997; Andersen and Knudsen, 1998]).

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The European Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer Satellite Mission: Its Impact on Geophysics

Cited by 76 publications

References 38 publications

Toward Improved Estimation of the Dynamic Topography and Ocean Circulation in the High Latitude and Arctic Ocean: The Importance of GOCE

Toward Improved Estimation of the Dynamic Topography and Ocean Circulation in the High Latitude and Arctic Ocean: The Importance of GOCE

Using ground gravity to improve ice mass change estimation from GOCE gravity gradients in mid-west Greenland

Ocean Gravity Models From Future Satellite Missions

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