First results towards an isostatically compensated Reference Earth model

Abstract

Different isostatically compensated gravity models are assessed in view of a synthetic reference Earth gravity model. Among the models considered are a model produced by the analysis of the density and stratification information of the CRUST 2.0 global crustal database, and an isostatically compensated gravity model based on a simple spherical layer compensation mechanism. The deduced coefficients are used for direct computations of geoidal heights in a global scale. Appropriate filtering of the models relates the computed fields to known structures of the Earth’s interior, like the topography of the core-mantle boundary (CMB).