Uncertainties of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment time-variable gravity-field solutions based on three-cornered hat method

Vagner G. Ferreira, Henry D. C. Montecino, Caleb I. Yakubu, Bernhard Heck

Research output: Journal PublicationArticlepeer-review

60 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Currently, various satellite processing centers produce extensive data, with different solutions of the same field being available. For instance, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) has been monitoring terrestrial water storage (TWS) since April 2002, while the Center for Space Research (CSR), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ), and the Groupe de Recherche de Géodésie Spatiale (GRGS) provide individual monthly solutions in the form of Stokes coefficients. The inverted TWS maps (or the regionally averaged values) from these coefficients are being used in many applications; however, as no ground truth data exist, the uncertainties are unknown. Consequently, the purpose of this work is to assess the quality of each processing center by estimating their uncertainties using a generalized formulation of the three-cornered hat (TCH) method. Overall, the TCH results for the study period of August 2002 to June 2014 indicate that at a global scale, the CSR, GFZ, GRGS, and JPL presented uncertainties of 9.4, 13.7, 14.8, and 13.2 mm, respectively. At a basin scale, the overall good performance of the CSR was observed at 91 river basins. The TCH-based results were confirmed by a comparison with an ensemble solution from the four GRACE processing centers.
Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Applied Remote Sensing
Volume10
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 25 Feb 2016
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Uncertainties of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment time-variable gravity-field solutions based on three-cornered hat method'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this