Premières mesures françaises de gravimétrie absolue dans les régions polaires Antarctique (terre Adélie) et Arctique (Spitzberg)

This study is devoted to the first French determinations of absolute gravity in the Antarctic (Dumont-d'Urville, Terre Adélie) and Arctic (Ny-Alesund, Spitsbergen) polar regions. The measurements in Dumont-d'Urville were performed in 2000 with the help of the FG5#206 absolute gravimeter belonging to the French geodetic community since beginning 1997; they show a strong noise that causes an uncertainty close to 11 μGal in the determination of the mean gravity value, which will be compared, to a new determination planned for 2005. The Ny-Alesund measurements show on the contrary a noise that, although very variable in time, leads to a gravity determination of better than 5 μGal. The comparison of our value with a previous one two years before suggests a gravity decrease of about 4 μGal which is related to the vertical uplift measured by Very Large Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at the same site. However, the uncertainty does not allow discriminating between height-to-gravity conversion factors originating from different models. To cite this article: J. Hinderer et al., C. R. Geoscience 334 (2002) 819–826.