Consistent integration of global gravity field information into earth process models

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Wolf-Dieter Schuh
• Subject Area: Geophysics
• Term: from 2006 to 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 30101619

Earth gravity field models with high spatial and temporal resolution are usually provided in terms of spherical harmonic models. This flexible notation allows assimilating various functionals of the earth¿s gravity field into one homogeneous model. To facilitate the integration of such gravity field information into earth process models in a way that the spatial resolution and the temporal variations are consistently taken into account, the global spherical harmonic model must be transformed into an application-oriented numerical representation as gridded line or surface models. The goal of this project is to develop procedures that allow an optimal integration of gravity field parameters and their variance-covariance information into geo-scientific process models. The focus will be on the efficient representation of the variance-covariance information while taking strictly into account the numerical characteristics of the entire integration process. The results will be relevant for all the geoscientists that use regionally gridded gravity data such as height or gravity anomalies for the purpose of modeling earth processes.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1257: Mass Transport and Mass Distribution in the Earth System