Validating global hydrological models by ground and space gravimetry

Abstract

The long-term continuous gravity observations obtained by the superconducting gravimeters (SG) at seven globally-distributed stations are comprehensively analyzed. After removing the signals related to the Earth’s tides and variations in the Earth’s rotation, the gravity residuals are used to describe the seasonal fluctuations in gravity field. Meanwhile, the gravity changes due to the air pressure loading are theoretically modeled from the measurements of the local air pressure, and those due to land water and nontidal ocean loading are also calculated according to the corresponding numerical models. The numerical results show that the gravity changes due to both the air pressure and land water loading are as large as 100×10−9 m s−2 in magnitude, and about 10×10−9 m s−2 for those due to the nontidal ocean loading in the coastal area. On the other hand, the monthly-averaged gravity variations over the area surrounding the stations are derived from the spherical harmonic coefficients of the GRACE-recovered gravity fields, by using Gaussian smoothing technique in which the radius is set to be 600 km. Compared the land water induced gravity variations, the SG observations after removal of tides, polar motion effects, air pressure and nontidal ocean loading effects and the GRACE-derived gravity variations with each other, it is inferred that both the ground- and space-based gravity observations can effectively detect the seasonal gravity variations with a magnitude of 100×10−9 m s−2 induced by the land water loading. This implies that high precision gravimetry is an effective technique to validate the reliabilities of the hydrological models.