Abstract
“Gravity From Space” for Oceans, Land Ice, and Sea Level Rise; Hamburg, Germany, 29–30 September 2010; Twenty‐five scientists met at the University of Hamburg's KlimaCampus to discuss current analyses and future applications of spaceborne gravity measurements to studies of ocean circulation, cryospheric science, and sea level rise. The Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP), Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), and Gravity Field and Steady‐State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellites, complemented with radar and laser altimeters, provide the necessary data. Spaceborne gravity measurements provide two important quantities for ocean circulation studies: (1) the time‐averaged geoid, which when subtracted from a time mean sea surface from radar altimetry yields the absolute surface dynamic topography and absolute surface geostrophic currents, and (2) time changes in ocean bottom pressure and total ocean mass. For sea level rise, the difference between the globally averaged trend from altimetry and that from GRACE is used to infer the top‐to‐bottom steric component (the component of sea level rise resulting from expansion of seawater due to temperature and salt), which is observable with data from the Argo system, a network of drifting probes that measure temperature up to 2000 meters in depth, and from expendable bathythermographs (XBT), temperature sensors deployed by ships.
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