New ultrahigh‐resolution picture of Earth's gravity field

TLDR

The authors combine satellite and terrestrial gravity measurements with topography and employ massive parallel computing to generate a ~200 m resolution global gravity map. The resulting ultrahigh‑resolution map covers 80 % of land, contains over 3 billion points, identifies new extreme gravity sites, shows the current peak‑to‑peak standard is too low by ~40 %, and is freely available for scientific and engineering use.

Abstract

Abstract We provide an unprecedented ultrahigh resolution picture of Earth's gravity over all continents and numerous islands within ±60° latitude. This is achieved through augmentation of new satellite and terrestrial gravity with topography data and use of massive parallel computation techniques, delivering local detail at ~200 m spatial resolution. As such, our work is the first‐of‐its‐kind to model gravity at unprecedented fine scales yet with near‐global coverage. The new picture of Earth's gravity encompasses a suite of gridded estimates of gravity accelerations, radial and horizontal field components, and quasi‐geoid heights at over 3 billion points covering 80% of Earth's land masses. We identify new candidate locations of extreme gravity signals, suggesting that the Committee on Data for Science and Technology standard for peak‐to‐peak variations in free‐fall gravity is too low by about 40%. The new models are beneficial for a wide range of scientific and engineering applications and freely available to the public.