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Comparison and evaluation of high-resolution marine gravity recovery via sea surface heights or sea surface slopes

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Abstract

There are two dominating approaches of modeling the marine gravity field based on satellite altimetry observations. In this study, the marine gravity field is determined in four selected areas (Northwestern Atlantic, Hawaii ocean area, Mariana Trench area, and Aegean Sea) by using exact same input datasets but different methods which are based on sea surface height (SSH) and sea surface slope (SSS), respectively. The impact of the methodology is evaluated by conducting validations with shipborne gravity observation. The CryoSat-2, Jason-1/2, and SARAL/Altika geodetic mission data (similarly 3-year-long time series) are firstly retracked by the two-pass retracker. After that, the obtained SSHs are used for the derivation of geoid undulations and vertical deflections, and then for the resulting marine gravity field separately. The validation results indicate that the SSH-based method has advantages in robustly estimating marine gravity anomalies near the coastal zone. The SSS-based method has advantages over regions with intermedium ocean depths (2000–4000 m) where seamounts and ridges are found, but obvious disadvantages when the ocean currents flow along the north–south direction (e.g., western boundary currents) or the topography features north–south directional trenches. In the deep ocean where the seafloor topography is plain and smooth, the two methods have similar accuracy.

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Data availability

The gridded gravity anomalies in NetCDF format for two gravity recovery methods in four research regions will be available via public server (ftp://ftp.space.dtu.dk/pub/Altimetry/Shengjun_ MethodComparison).

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Acknowledgements

The multi-satellite altimeter data were provided by CNES and ESA, while the ship-borne gravimetric data were provided by NGA and GEOMED2 project. SIO and DTU kindly proved global marine gravity models for comparison. Zhang is supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China, Grant No. 41804002, by the State Scholarship Fund of China Scholarship Council, Grant No. 201906085024, by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Resources and Civil Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China

    Shengjun Zhang

  2. DTU Space, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

    Shengjun Zhang, Adili Abulaitijiang & Ole Baltazar Andersen

  3. Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA

    David T. Sandwell

  4. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 3838 Vogel Rd, Arnold, MO, 63010, USA

    James R. Beale

Authors
  1. Shengjun Zhang
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  2. Adili Abulaitijiang
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  3. Ole Baltazar Andersen
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  4. David T. Sandwell
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  5. James R. Beale
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Contributions

Conception or design of the work was contributed by SZ, AA, and OBA; Data analysis and interpretation were contributed by SZ, AA, and OBA; Writing—original draft preparation, was contributed by SZ; Writing—review and editing, was contributed by AA and OBA; Critical revision of the article was contributed by DTS; Marine data collection was contributed by JRB.

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Correspondence to Shengjun Zhang.

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Zhang, S., Abulaitijiang, A., Andersen, O.B. et al. Comparison and evaluation of high-resolution marine gravity recovery via sea surface heights or sea surface slopes. J Geod 95, 66 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-021-01506-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-021-01506-8

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