Investigation of temporal gravity variations in SG-records

Not all of the gravity signals commonly observed in records of superconducting gravimeters have a physically significant meaning. Instrumental noise or signal components generated by specific processing techniques can have a strong effect. This paper analyzes selected case studies from gravity data acquired during the first period of GGP and tries to give an answer to the question of which signals are significant. It is focused on small amplitude variations in the time domain, which are compared with those of conventional spring-type gravimeters. Coherent atmospheric gravity signals due to atmospheric processes associated with strong vertical convection could be observed by different sensors. The second part deals with temporal variations of main tidal parameters, which can be seen clearly in the tidal analysis results from SG data. Synthetic case studies show that they are not strongly influenced by the analysis procedure and therefore mainly reflect ocean loading processes.