Abstract
AbstractOne of the main fields of application of static gravity field models is the determination of the (geodetic) mean dynamic ocean topography (MDT) as the difference of a mean sea surface derived from multi-year satellite altimetry, and a high-resolution static geoid model. In this study the performance of several satellite-only global gravity models is evaluated based on the MDT and derived geostrophic ocean surface currents. These are the GRACE-only model ITG-Grace2010S, the GOCE-only model GOCE_TIM_R2, and the combined gravity model GOCO02S representing a consistent combination of GRACE and GOCE. The geodetic MDT results are validated against independently measured drifter data. Compared to GRACE, the new high-resolution GOCE models improve the estimates of the mean dynamic ocean topography, filtered to degree/order 180, by reducing the differences to the drifter data by 10–12 cm/s. Therefore, they contribute significantly to an improved knowledge of mean ocean circulation.KeywordsGlobal gravity modelGOCEMean dynamic topographyOcean currentsSpherical harmonics
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