Abstract
GOCE satellite mission enabled us to produce a dramatic improvement in the ability to measure the ocean’s mean dynamic topography (MDT). To promote the application of the new geodetic MDT, it is essential to estimate its error quantitatively. Motivated by this requirement, we carefully assessed the formal error of geodetic MDT based on the classical error propagation law across each harmonic degree and order (D/O) which corresponds to different spatial scale. In the processes above, we presented an efficient method by introducing Fast Fourier Transform Algorithm (FFT) for computation, by which the challenge of high computation load in formal error estimation across each cutoff D/O was overcome. It was found that the MDT formal errors were mainly dominated by geoid formal error across high cutoff D/O. Across low D/O the mean sea surface (MSS) formal error was primarily responsible for the MDT formal error. At the global scale (70 °S-70 °N), the geoid and MSS made similar contributions (0.27 cm) to the MDT formal error (0.38 cm) with a cutoff D/O of 120, corresponding to spatial resolution of 167 km; With a cutoff D/O of 100, 200, and 280, the MDT formal errors were approximately 0.32 cm, 2.0 cm, and 12.5 cm, respectively.
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