A comparison of different mass elements for use in gravity gradiometry

Topographic and isostatic mass anomalies affect the external gravity field of the Earth. Therefore, these effects also exist in the gravity gradients observed, e.g., by the satellite gravity gradiometry mission GOCE (Gravity and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Experiment). The downward continuation of the gravitational signals is rather difficult because of the high-frequency behaviour of the combined topographic and isostatic effects. Thus, it is preferable to smooth the gravity field by some topographic-isostatic reduction. In this paper the focus is on the modelling of masses in the space domain, which can be subdivided into different mass elements and evaluated with analytical, semi-analytical and numerical methods. Five alternative mass elements are reviewed and discussed: the tesseroid, the point mass, the prism, the mass layer and the mass line. The formulae for the potential, the attraction components and the Marussi tensor of second-order potential derivatives are provided. The formulae for different mass elements and computation methods are checked by assuming a synthetic topography of constant height over a spherical cap and the position of the computation point on the polar axis. For this special situation an exact analytical solution for the tesseroid exists and a comparison between the analytical solution of a spherical cap and the modelling of different mass elements is possible. A comparison of the computation times shows that modelling by tesseroids with different methods produces the most accurate results in an acceptable computation time. As a numerical example, the Marussi tensor of the topographic effect is computed globally using tesseroids calculated by Gauss–Legendre cubature (3D) on the basis of a digital height model. The order of magnitude in the radial-radial component is about  ± 8 E.U. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.