Seasonal gravity changes estimated from GRACE data

Abstract

Since 2002, the GRACE program has provided a large amount of high-precision data, which can be used to detect temporal gravity variations related to global mass re-distribution inside the fluid envelop of the surface of the Earth. In order to make use of the GRACE data to investigate earthquake-related gravity changes in China, we first studied the degree variances of the monthly GRACE gravity field models, and then applied decor-relation and Gaussian smoothing method to obtain seasonal gravity changes in China. By deducting the multi-year mean seasonal variations from the seasonal maps, we found some earthquake-related gravity anomalies.

Keywords

• GRACE
• earthquake
• gravity variations
• decorrelation
• Gaussian smoothing