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Free keywords:
Satellite geodesy; Time variable gravity; Loading of the Earth; Hydrology
Abstract:
Globally gridded estimates of monthly-mean anomalies of terrestrial water storage (TWS)
are estimated from the most recent GRACE release 05a of GFZ Potsdam in order to provide
non-geodetic users a convenient access to state-of-the-art GRACE monitoring data. We
use an ensemble of five global land model simulations with different physics and different
atmospheric forcing to obtain reliable gridded scaling factors required to correct for spatial
leakage introduced during data processing. To allow for the application of this data-set for
large-scale monitoring tasks, model validation efforts, and subsequently also data assimilation
experiments, globally gridded estimates of TWS uncertainties that include (i) measurement,
(ii) leakage and (iii) re-scaling errors are provided as well. The results are generally consistent
with the gridded data provided by Tellus, but deviate in some basins which are largely affected
by the uncertainties of the model information required for re-scaling, where the approach
based on the median of a small ensemble of global land models introduced in this paper leads
to more robust results.
