Estimating GRACE terrestrial water storage anomaly using an improved point mass solution

Abstract

Abstract The availability of terrestrial water storage anomaly (TWSA) data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) supports many hydrological applications. Five TWSA products are operational and publicly available, including three based on mass concentration (mascon) solutions and two based on the synthesis of spherical harmonic coefficients (SHCs). The mascon solutions have advantages regarding the synthesis of SHCs since the basis functions are represented locally rather than globally, which allows geophysical data constraints. Alternative new solutions based on SHCs are, therefore, critical and warranted to enrich the portfolio of user-friendly TWSA data based on different algorithms. TWSA data based on novel processing protocols is presented with a spatial re-sampling of 0.25 arc-degrees covering 2002–2022. This approach parameterizes the improved point mass (IPM) and adopts the synthesized residual gravitational potential as observations. The assay indicates that the proposed Hohai University (HHU-) IPM TWSA data reliably agree with the mascon solutions. The presented HHU-IPM TWSA data set would be instrumental in regional hydrological applications, particularly enabling improved assessment of regional water budgets.