A Study on Comparison of Observed and Derived Gravity Data

Abstract

In studies in earth sciences such as geodesy and geophysics, it is important to determine the gravity field as precisely as possible. In the determination of this field, it is quite common to use data sets obtained from satellites as well as terrestrial measurements. Especially, thanks to Low Earth Orbits (LEO), research conducted to determine the gravity field of the earth has gained speed in recent years. CHAMP (CHAllenging Minisatellite Payload-2000), GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment-2002) and GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer-2009) satellites are at the top of these satellites, respectively. The data collected from these satellites has contributed and continues to contribute to the production of many Global Geopotential Models (GGMs). This study aimed to demonstrate the performance of the eight Global Geopotential Models published by ICGEM (International Centre for Global Earth Models). In this context, the results were evaluated by making a numerical comparison between the gravity values obtained from the GGMs and the observed gravity data.