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Hydrological Signals Observed by the GRACE Satellites

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Abstract

The main objective of the US-German twin-satellite mission GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), launched in March 2002, is a precise survey of the Earth’s time-variable gravity field at unprecedented temporal and spatial scales. Temporal changes in the gravity field are related to continuous mass redistributions near the Earth’s surface which are caused by various geophysical and climatologically driven processes. Vice versa, transferring the GRACE-based gravity variations into time series of the spatial variability of surface mass anomalies, the mission allows for the first time for a quantification of the ongoing mass transport. Such data is of unique importance for a comprehensive modeling, understanding and interplay of these processes. In this contribution we give an overview of the basic features of the GRACE satellite mission, the gravity recovery process and the derived gravity products at GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ), as well as the interpretation of the GRACE gravity data with the focus on the detection of hydrological signals. This includes a description of the evolution and present status of the quality of GFZ’s GRACE-based global gravity models on the actual fourth model generation (called GFZ-RL04), and an overview of recent findings using GRACE data in hydrological applications.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which helped to improve the manuscript. The German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) supports these investigations within the geoscientific R+D programme GEOTECHNOLOGIEN “Erfassung des Systems Erde aus dem Weltraum” under grants 03F0436A, 03F0423A and 03F0424A and within the Special Priority Programme (SPP) 1257 “Mass Transport and Mass Distribution within the Earth System” under grants FL 592/1-1, FL 592/2-1, FL 592/3-1, KU 1207/6-1 and KU 1207/7-1.

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  1. Department 1 Geodesy and Remote Sensing, GeoForschungZentrum Potsdam, Telegrafenberg, 14473, Potsdam, Germany

    R. Schmidt, F. Flechtner, U. Meyer, K.-H. Neumayer, Ch. Dahle, R. König & J. Kusche

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  1. R. Schmidt
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  2. F. Flechtner
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  7. J. Kusche
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Correspondence to R. Schmidt.

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Schmidt, R., Flechtner, F., Meyer, U. et al. Hydrological Signals Observed by the GRACE Satellites. Surv Geophys 29, 319–334 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-008-9033-3

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