Validation of Satellite Gravity Field Models by Regional Terrestrial Data Sets

Evaluation of the first GOCE static gravity field models using terrestrial gravity, vertical deflections and EGM2008 quasigeoid heights

“…Another set of ~300 vertical deflections (not used here) was recently observed for GOCE validation with a digital zenith camera in Germany. These stations, located along two ~500 km profiles, were low-pass filtered with a Gaussian filter for comparisons with recent GGMs (Voigt et al 2009;Ihde et al 2010).…”

“…Gravity observations (first radial derivatives of the disturbing potential) and vertical deflections (first horizontal derivatives of the disturbing potential) possess significant spectral power in the medium and high frequencies (Schwarz 1985, Jekeli 1999, Torge 2001, so are useful complements to GGM evaluation using GPS/levelling points (Gruber 2009;Ihde et al 2010;Gruber et al 2011). The two vertical deflection data sets are particularly valuable, as they are fully independent of any GGM used in this paper.…”

“…The application of the spectral enhancement method (SEM) for GOCE GGM validation with scattered ground-truth data is one subject of this paper. Low-pass filtering using methods such as spectral filters, Gaussian filters or least-squares collocation (LSC) may perform well when the terrestrial data is available in some suitable arrangement, for instance, profiles (e.g., Ihde et al 2010), grids, or at densely scattered locations. However, low-pass filtering is a delicate task in the case of very irregularly or scarcely distributed stations, if possible at all.…”

“…Low-pass filtering of the terrestrial data to remove their high-frequency constituents (e.g., Gruber 2004;Ihde et al 2010). 2.…”

Evaluation of recent GOCE geopotential models over the area of Poland

“…They have been performed in different parts of the world using different processing procedure and different data sets, e.g. evaluations conducted by Ihde et al (2010) in Germany, Janak and Pitonak (2011) in Central Europe, Hirt et al (2011) worldwide, Šprlák et al (2012) in Norway, Guimarães et al (2012) in Brazil, etc. In Poland, the 1 st , 2 nd and part of 3 rd release of GOCE GGMs were evaluated with the use of the EGM08 and high-precision GPS/levelling data (Godah and Krynski, 2012). The estimated standard deviations of the differences between the obtained from GOCE models and truncated EGM08 model height anomalies and gravity anomalies were within the range of 4-11 cm, and 1-3 mGal, respectively, and differences between height anomalies obtained from GOCE models and the corresponding ones at highprecision GPS/levelling control traverse sites were within the range of 8-11 cm.…”