Local Geoid and Gravity Anomaly Predictions Using Point Masses.

• Main Authors: Blaha,Georges, Hadgigeorge,George
• Other Authors: AIR FORCE GEOPHYSICS LAB HANSCOM AFB MA
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1979
• Subjects: Geodesy; *EARTH ORBITS; *GEODESY; *ALTIMETERS; MATRICES(MATHEMATICS); COEFFICIENTS; PERTURBATIONS; GEOIDS; GRAVITY ANOMALIES; HARMONIC ANALYSIS; GEOS-3 satellite; Spherical harmonics; Point Mass method; WUAFGL2309G106; PE61102F; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA074524; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA074524

The point mass technique, which supplements a spherical harmonic expansion of the potential, allows short wavelength detail to be added to previously computed long wavelength geoidal features without distorting the latter. Recently, the AFGL short-arc approach to satellite altimetry has been modified to allow point mass adjustments. GEOS-3 altimeter residuals in the North Atlantic region were obtained from a first adjustment in terms of spherical harmonics and state vector parameters. A subsequent point mass adjustment was performed on these residuals to obtain the short wavelength geoid and gravity anomalies. Advantages of the point mass model stem from a flexible deployment of the new parameters (point mass magnitudes) in an area of interest that permits important computer savings when processing large amounts of satellite data in a local region. (Author)