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Abstract

This work demonstrates applications of GRACE gravity data on oceanographically relevant questions concerning global eustatic sea level rise and water mass transport in the region of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). Due to the development of the background model OMCT in the AOD1B product from RL04 to RL05 during the preparation of this work GRACE data of two releases (RL04 and RL05) will be used for each application. Therefore, a description of the improvements of the latest RL05 will be given. Transport variations in the ACC region will be estimated from three temporally different GRACE solutions (GFZ RL04, CNES/GRGS RL02, ITG-GRACE2010) and will be compared to in situ observations of ocean bottom pressure from OBP recorders and sea level variations from tide gauge stations along the Antarctic continent. Connections of the mean atmospheric dynamics of the Southern Hemisphere to the transport variations will be made by comparing the transport time series to the Southern Annular Mode index. Estimations of the global ocean mass variations will be made with the current RL05 solutions of GFZ. Therefore, the problem of including degree-1 information in the GRACE data will be discussed by enhancing the determination method of Swenson et al. (2008). Also the impact of including a homogeneous distributed eustatic signal or regionally different due to effects of Loading and Self-Attraction will be assessed.