Comparison Of Goce Global Gravity Field Models To Test Fields In Southern Norway

Numerous global gravity field models (GGFMs) have resulted from the satellite gradiometry mission GOCE. Validation is indispensable to test the performance of the new-generation models. For this purpose independent datasets of terrestrial data are very often used.In this study, homogenous datasets of free-air gravity anomalies and GNSS/leveling points have been collected in southern Norway. These datasets have been exploited for validation of four GOCE-derived GGFMs (DIR_r3, GOCO03s, TIM_r3, and DGM-1S) by the spectral enhancement method.Numerical experiments have proven that the effect of the residual terrain model is important to free-air gravity anomalies but not to height anomalies. Validation of GOCE GGFMs has revealed that performance of these models is very similar. However, in comparison to EGM2008, we have observed 10 % increase of the standard deviation for the GOCE-derived models at d/o 210, 20 % increase at d/o 230, and up to 65 % increase at d/o 250. In addition, validation by GNSS/leveling data suggests significant improvements delivered by the GOCE GGFMs with respect to EGM2008 between d/o 100-200 in our test field.