The gravity recovery and climate experiment: Mission overview and early results
Open accessAbstract
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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Contemporary efforts to refine W0 and regional geoid models draw on satellite gravity missions GRACE and GOCE, combined with terrestrial and airborne gravimetry and GNSS-levelling observations.
“Contemporary efforts to refine W0 and regional geoid models draw on satellite gravity missions such as GRACE [28] and GOCE [22]”
From Chapter 1 Theoretical background (1996) · cites this paper as [28]
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Research works printed but not linked: 7
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- Tapley, B., et al. (2001), Gravity field determination from CHAMP using GPS tracking and accelerometer data: Initial results, Eos Trans. AGU, 82(47), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract G51A-0236.
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Chapter 1 Theoretical background
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- Authors
- Tapley, B. D., Bettadpur, S., Watkins, M., & Reigber, C.
- Affiliations
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US)
- GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences (DE)
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2004-05-08
- Volume
- 31
- Issue
- 9
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W1588827410
- Cited by
- 3,024
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 173 · 2025: 197 · 2024: 182 · 2023: 199 · 2022: 210 · 2021: 190 · 2020: 178 · 2019: 189 · 2018: 154 · 2017: 149 · 2016: 145 · 2015: 160 · 2014: 131 · 2013: 95 · 2012: 117
- FWCI
- 63.07
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
- Publication Database GFZ (GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam - Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Oceanography › Geophysics and Gravity Measurements
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Aerospace Engineering › GNSS positioning and interference
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Soil Moisture and Remote Sensing
- Keywords
- GRACE mission, Earth gravity field, gravity field changes, gravity model, satellite gravimetry, error estimates
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