High-frequency non-tidal ocean loading effects on surface gravity measurements

Abstract

We model atmospheric and non-tidal oceanic loading effects on surface gravity variations, using global surface pressure field provided by the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), and sea surface height from the Toulouse Hydrodynamic Unstructured Grid Ocean model (HUGO-m) barotropic ocean model. We show the improvement in terms of reduction of variance of 15 different superconducting gravimeters of the worldwide Global Geodynamics Project (GGP) network, compared to the classical inverted barometer assumption. We also study two storm surges over the Western European Shelf in 2000 and 2003. We compare the HUGO-m sea surface height variations to various tide gauges measurements as well as the induced loading effects to the computations of Fratepietro et al., using the Proudman Storm Surge model, for the Membach (Belgium) station. The agreement between modelled ocean loading and gravity observations is largely improved when using a global atmospheric loading correction, compared to the classical local approach. The remaining discrepancies are mainly due to hydrological loading contributions. © 2008 The Authors Journal compilation © 2008 RAS.