The role of satellite altimetry in gravity field modelling in coastal areas

During recent years altimetry from the two geodetic missions of GEOSAT and ERS-1 has enabled the derivation of high resolution near global gravity field from altimetry [Andersen and Knudsen, 1995, 1996; Sandwell and Smith, 1997]. Altimetric gravity fields are unique in the sense that they provide global uniform gravity information with very high resolution, and these global marine gravity fields are registered on a two by two minute grid corresponding to 4 by 4 kilometres at the equator. In this presentation several coastal complications in deriving the marine gravity field from satellite altimetry will be investigated using the KMS98 gravity field. Comparison with other sources of gravity field information like airborne and marine gravity observations will be carried out and two fundamentally different test areas (Azores and Skagerak) will be studied to investigated the different role of these different sources of gravity information. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.