Abstract
We provide an unprecedented ultrahigh resolution picture of Earth's gravity over all continents and numerous islands within ±60° latitude. This is achieved through augmentation of new satellite and terrestrial gravity with topography data and use of massive parallel computation techniques, delivering local detail at ~200 m spatial resolution. As such, our work is the first-of-its-kind to model gravity at unprecedented fine scales yet with near-global coverage. The new picture of Earth's gravity encompasses a suite of gridded estimates of gravity accelerations, radial and horizontal field components, and quasi-geoid heights at over 3 billion points covering 80% of Earth's land masses. We identify new candidate locations of extreme gravity signals, suggesting that the Committee on Data for Science and Technology standard for peak-to-peak variations in free-fall gravity is too low by about 40%. The new models are beneficial for a wide range of scientific and engineering applications and freely available to the public. Key Points Satellite, terrestrial and topographic gravity combined at ~200 m resolution Model covers all continents within SRTM data, and developing countries Gravity accelerations on Earth estimated to vary within ~7000 mGal, or 0.7 %..
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 4279-4283 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Geophysical Research Letters |
Volume | 40 |
Issue number | 16 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 28 Aug 2013 |
Keywords
- Earth's gravity field
- gravity
- quasi-geoid
- ultrahigh resolution
- vertical deflections