Wang Haihong

Trend of mass change in the Antarctic ice sheet recovered from the GRACE temporal gravity field

It is important to quantify mass variations in the Antarctic ice sheet to study the global sea-level rise and climate change. A hybrid filtering scheme employing a combination of the decorrelated filter P3M6 and 300 km Fan filter was used, and the surface mass variations over the Antarctic are recovered from GRACE CSR RL04 monthly gravity field models from August 2002 to June 2010. After deduction of leakage errors using the GLDAS hydrological model and postglacial rebound effects using the glacial isostatic adjustment model IJ05, the variations in the ice sheet mass are obtained. The results reveal that the rate of melting of the Antarctic ice sheet is 80.0 Gt/a and increasing and contributes 0.22 mm/a to the global sea-level rise; the mass loss rate is 78.3 Gt/a in the West Antarctic and 1.6 Gt/a in the East Antarctic. The average mass loss rate increases from 39.3 Gt/a for the period 2002–2005 to 104.2 Gt/a for the period 2006–2010, and its corresponding contribution to the global sea-level rise increases from 0.11 to 0.29 mm/a, which indicates accelerated ice mass loss over the Antarctic since 2006. Moreover, the mass accumulation rates for Enderby Land and Wilkes Land along the coast of East Antarctica decrease for the period 2006–2008 but increase evidently after 2009.

Comparison of present SST gravity field models

Taking the main land of Europe as the region to be studied, the potential of the new satellite gravity technique: satellite-to-satellite tracking (SST) and improving the accuracy of regional gravity field model with the SST models are investigated. The drawbacks of these models are discussed. With GPM98C as the reference, the gravity anomaly residuals of several other models, the latest SST global gravity field models (EIGEN series and GGM series), were computed and compared. The results of the comparison show that in the selected region, some systematic errors with periodical properties exist in the EIGEN and GGMs S series models in the high degree and order. Some information that was not shown in the classic gravity models is detected in the low and middle degree and order of EIGEN and GGMs S series models. At last, the effective maximum degrees and orders of SST models are suggested.

Accuracy analysis for SST gravity field model in China

Taking China as the region for test the potential of the new satellite gravity technique, satelliteto-satellite tracking for improving the accuracy of regional gravity field model is studied. With WDM94 as reference, the gravity anomaly residuals of three models, the latest two GRACE global gravity field model (EIGEN_GRACE02S, GGM02S) and EGM96, are computed and compared. The causes for the differences among the residuals of the three models are discussed. The comparison between the residuals shows that in the selected region, EIGEN_GRACE02S or GGM02S is better than EGM96 in lower degree part (less than 110 degree). Additionally, through the analysis of the model gravity anomaly residuals, it is found that some systematic errors with periodical properties exist in the higher degree part of EIGEN and GGM models, the results can also be taken as references in the validation of the SST gravity data.