Quasigeoid-to-geoid determination by EGM08

Abstract

We present a method to estimate the difference between quasigeoid and geoid heights globally from the Earth Gravitational Model EGM08 and a related topographic model. The numerical computations with the standard topographic density of 2.67 g/cm3 show that the maximum and minimum of the separations are estimated to 5.47 m and −0.11 m on the Tibet plateau and in the Indian Ocean, respectively. These estimates do not consider possible topographic density variations, which result in topographic bias changes proportional to the topographic elevation squared. Assuming such density changes of 10% from the standard value, the separation may change up to 5 dm.