G2.1 The Global Geodetic Observing System: Improving Today's Infrastructure for Tomorrow's Science |
Convener: Günter Stangl (deceased) | Co-Conveners: Detlef Angermann , Michael R. Pearlman , Richard Gross |
The Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) provides measurements of the time varying gravity, rotation, and shape of the Earth using geodetic and gravimetric instruments located on the ground and in space. These measurements need to be accurate to better than a part per billion in order to advance our understanding of the underlying processes that are causing the Earth's rotation, gravity, and shape to change. Mass transport in the global water cycle, sea level and climate change, and crustal deformation associated with geohazards are examples of particularly demanding applications of geodetic and gravimetric measurements. All these measurements require a common reference with the same precision, like the Terrestrial Reference Frame and the Unified Height System. GGOS is designed to unite the individual observations and model into one consistent frame with the highest precision available. This session should be a platform for discussing improvements to global geodetic observing systems including multidisciplinary approaches as well as for single contributions with high precision in a global network.