On the Accuracy Assessment of the Latest Releases of GOCE Satellite-Based Geopotential Models with EGM2008 and Terrestrial GPS/Levelling and Gravity Data over Egypt

Abstract

The Global Geopotential Models (GGMs) of GOCE (Gravity Recovery and steady- state Ocean Circulation Explorer) differ globally as well as regionally in their accuracy and resolution based on the maximum degree and order (d/o) of the fully normalized spherical harmonic (SH) coefficients, which express each GGM. The main idea of this study is to compare the free-air gravity anomalies and quasi geoid heights determined from several recent GOCE-based GGMs with the corresponding ones from the Earth Gravitational Model 2008 (EGM2008) over Egypt on the one hand and with ground-based measurements on the other hand. The results regarding to the comparison of GOCE-based GGMs with terrestrial gravity and GPS/levelling data provide better improvement with respect to EGM2008. The 4th release GOCE-based GGM developed with the use of space-wise solution strategy (SPW_R4) approximates the gravity field well over the Egyptian region. The SPW_R4 model is accordingly suggested as a reference model for recovering the long wavelength (up to SH d/o 200) components of quasi geoid heights when modelling the gravimetric quasi-geoid over the Egypt. Finally, three types of transformation models: Four-, Five- and Seven-parameter transformations have been applied to reduce the data biases and to provide a better fitting of quasi geoid heights obtained from the studied GOCE-based GGMs to those from GPS/levelling data. These models reveal that the standard deviation of vertical datum over Egypt is at the level of about 32 cm.