Improving gravity anomalies over China marginal sea from retracked Geosat and ERS-1 data

Abstract

The quality of altimeter data and ocean tide model is critical to the recovery of coastal gravity anomalies. In this contribution, three retracking methods (threshold, improved threshold and Beta-5) are investigated with the aim of improving the altimeter data over a shallow water area. Comparison indicates that the improved threshold is the best retracking method over China Sea. Two ocean tide models, NAO99b and CSR4.0, are analyzed. Results show that different tide models used in the processing of altimeter data may result in differences more than 10 mGal in recovered coastal gravity anomalies. Also, NAO99b is more suitable than CSR4.0 over the shallow water area of China Sea. Finally, gravity anomalies over China Sea are calculated from retracked Geosat/GM and ERS-1/GM data by least squares collocation. Comparison with shipborne gravimetry data demonstrates that gravity anomalies from retracked data are significantly superior to those from non-retracked data. Our results have the same order as the other two altimeter-derived gravity models: Sandwell&Smith(V16) and DNSC08.