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Comparisons of atmospheric mass variations derived from ECMWF reanalysis and operational fields, over 2003–2011

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Abstract

There are two spurious jumps in the atmospheric part of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment-Atmosphere and Ocean De-aliasing level 1B (GRACE-AOD1B) products, which occurred in January-February of the years 2006 and 2010, as a result of the vertical level and horizontal resolution changes in the ECMWFop (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts operational analysis). These jumps cause a systematic error in the estimation of mass changes from GRACE time-variable level 2 products, since GRACE-AOD1B mass variations are removed during the computation of GRACE level 2. In this short note, the potential impact of using an improved set of 6-hourly atmospheric de-aliasing products on the computations of linear trends as well as the amplitude of annual and semi-annual mass changes from GRACE is assessed. These improvements result from 1) employing a modified 3D integration approach (ITG3D), and 2) using long-term consistent atmospheric fields from the ECMWF reanalysis (ERA-Interim). The monthly averages of the new ITG3D-ERA-Interim de-aliasing products are then compared to the atmospheric part of GRACE-AOD1B, covering January 2003 to December 2010. These comparisons include the 33 world largest river basins along with Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets. The results indicate a considerable difference in total atmospheric mass derived from the two products over some of the mentioned regions. We suggest that future GRACE studies consider these through updating uncertainty budgets or by applying corrections to estimated trends and amplitudes/phases.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank R. Klees and P. Ditmar for their constructive comments. We further thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful remarks which improved considerably the manuscript. E. Forootan and J. Kusche are grateful for the financial support provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under the project BAYES-G. We are grateful for the GRACE-AOD1B products that are provided by the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ, Potsdam, via the Information System and Data Centre (ISDC, http://isdc.gfz-potsdam.de/index.php). ITG3D-ERA-Interim was downloaded from the website of the Astronomical, Physical, and Mathematical Geodesy (APMG) group, Bonn University (http://www.igg.uni-bonn.de/apmg/index.php?id=itg3d_erainterim). We are also grateful to the ECMWF ERA-Interim data, downloaded from http://data-portal.ecmwf.int/data/d/interim_daily/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation, Bonn University, Nussallee 17, 53115 , Bonn, Germany

    E. Forootan, M. Schumacher, J. Kusche & B. Elsaka

  2. Faculty Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    O. Didova

  3. National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics, Helwan, Cairo, Egypt

    B. Elsaka

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  1. E. Forootan
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  2. O. Didova
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  3. M. Schumacher
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  4. J. Kusche
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  5. B. Elsaka
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Correspondence to E. Forootan.

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Forootan, E., Didova, O., Schumacher, M. et al. Comparisons of atmospheric mass variations derived from ECMWF reanalysis and operational fields, over 2003–2011. J Geod 88, 503–514 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-014-0696-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-014-0696-x

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