A Comparison of Different Downward Continuation Methods for Airborne Gravity Data

Abstract

Abstract In this paper four downward continuation methods for airborne gravity data‐the direct representation method, Tikhonov regularization, point‐mass method and the spherical interior Dirichlet's harmonic solution method are presented. The downward continuation computation for real airborne gravity data of the Datong region in China is performed by means of these methods. The accuracy, reliability and stability of different methods are evaluated with respect to the comparison and analysis of downward continued results with terrestrial real gravity data. The numerical computations indicate that results obtained by using the first and second methods are more accurate and stable than those by using the third and fourth methods.