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GOCESeaComb Project

Monitoring the Earth’s gravity field both over marine and continental regions has been the focus of extensive geodetic research for the past decades, but is gaining increasing importance due to the recent gravity-field dedicated satellite missions. With the missions of CHAMP and GRACE setting the path, the latest ESA mission of GOCE is offering new opportunities for improved insights into the Earth’s gravity field and geoid, while the synergistic use of geodetic and oceanographic data are promising improved representations of the ocean circulation and the sea level variations mechanisms. Moreover, the combination of GOCE-type high-quality and accuracy gravity field models with altimetric observations from ESA’s ENVISAT and ERS1/2 missions, offer new opportunities for the determination of the marine geoid, vertical datum unification and the introduction of a global vertical datum, dynamic ocean topography (DOT) modelling, etc.

The key points in such studies, in order to determine rigorously stationary components of the gravity field as the geoid and/or quasi and non-stationary ones as the DOT, the time-varying DOT and steric and eustatic sea level variations, are: a) The utilization of calibrated and validated input data, b) the investigation of the spectral content of the input data, and c) the development of data optimal combination methods, considering the statistical behaviour of the input observations, towards the achievement of high-quality and accuracy predictions.

The main objective of the GOCESeaComb project is related to the exploitation of data from ESA’s GOCE, ENVISAT and ERS1/2 missions towards the modelling and improved understanding of Earth Observations parameters as the geoid, sea level and DOT in the Mediterranean Sea. To reach the main goal of the project, several sub-objectives have been identified, given that the entire study can be broken-down in the following three major steps:

• Study of data prerequisites and methodologies development,
• collection, validation and processing of heterogeneous data and
• optimal combination of the afore mentioned data for gravity field multi-resolution representation, ocean circulation modelling and sea level variations determination.

GOCESeaComb is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) within its Scientific Experiment Development Program (PRODEX) following a successful application to the General Secretariat for Research & Technology (GSRT) after an invitation to the Greek scientific community in response to the 1st PRODEX Programme Call for Greece.

For more information on GOCESeaComb, its objectives, workflow, and main findings please browse through the rest of the site. Please note that the Partners Corner is only accessible for registered users, i.e., the project team and ESA PRODEX representatives.