The gravity recovery and climate experiment: Mission overview and early results

B. D. Tapley; S. Bettadpur; Michael M. Watkins; C. Reigber

doi:10.1029/2004gl019920

journal article May 08, 2004

The gravity recovery and climate experiment: Mission overview and early results

B. D. Tapley S. Bettadpur Michael M. Watkins C. Reigber

Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 31 No. 9 · American Geophysical Union (AGU)

View at Publisher Save 10.1029/2004gl019920

Abstract

The GRACE mission is designed to track changes in the Earth's gravity field for a period of five years. Launched in March 2002, the two GRACE satellites have collected nearly two years of data. A span of data available during the Commissioning Phase was used to obtain initial gravity models. The gravity models developed with this data are more than an order of magnitude better at the long and mid wavelengths than previous models. The error estimates indicate a 2‐cm accuracy uniformly over the land and ocean regions, a consequence of the highly accurate, global and homogenous nature of the GRACE data. These early results are a strong affirmation of the GRACE mission concept.

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Details

Published: May 08, 2004
Vol/Issue: 31(9)
License: View

Authors

B

B. D. Tapley

Center for Space Research The University of Texas at Austin Austin Texas USA

S

S. Bettadpur

Center for Space Research The University of Texas at Austin Austin Texas USA

M

Michael M. Watkins

Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena California USA

C

C. Reigber

GeoforschungsZentrum Potsdam Potsdam Germany

Cite This Article

B. D. Tapley, S. Bettadpur, Michael M. Watkins, et al. (2004). The gravity recovery and climate experiment: Mission overview and early results. Geophysical Research Letters, 31(9). https://doi.org/10.1029/2004gl019920

The gravity recovery and climate experiment: Mission overview and early results

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