Modelling of global mass effects in hydrology, atmosphere and oceans on surface gravity

Author(s)
Michael Mikolaj, Bruno Meurers, Andreas Güntner
Abstract

We present a Matlab™/Octave-based software tool mGlobe to compute the effect of atmospheric, continental water storage, and non-tidal ocean mass variations on surface gravity. These effects must be considered or reduced prior to any analysis of geophysical phenomena using observations of superconducting gravimeters. Contrary to the alternative providers, mGlobe allows the computation for an arbitrary location worldwide, supports a larger number of input models and offers more flexibility in terms of computation settings. The high number of supported models is important for assessment of model uncertainties. Discrepancies exceeding 75% were found. The continental water storage effect showed low sensitivity to spatial and temporal resolution. The deficient temporal resolution affects the non-tidal loading and atmospheric effects significantly. The same holds true for the influence of the spatial resolution on atmospheric effects. To compensate this effect, we introduce a site-specific correction factor based on differences between the real topography and model's orography.

Organisation(s)
Department of Meteorology and Geophysics
External organisation(s)
Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum
Journal
Computers & Geosciences
Volume
93
Pages
12-20
No. of pages
9
ISSN
0098-3004
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cageo.2016.04.014
Publication date
08-2016
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
105111 Gravimetry, 105102 General geophysics
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Computers in Earth Sciences, Information Systems
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/95f07818-a589-46ec-b5e4-78efe50f5740