The IGFS gravity field observations and products contributions to GGOS infrastructure

Through its structure the International Gravity Field Service (IGFS) promotes the interaction, cooperation and synergy between the Gravity Services, namely the Bureau Gravimétrique International (BGI), the International Service for the Geoid (ISG), the International Geodynamics and Earth Tides Service (IGETS), the International Center for Global Earth Models (ICGEM), the International Combination Service for Time-variable Gravity Fields (COST-G) and the International Digital Elevation Model Service (IDEMS).

Furthermore, via its Central Bureau hosted at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), IGFS provides a link to the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) Bureaus in order to communicate their requirements and recommendations to the IGFS-Centers. Moreover, IGFS provides a coordination host for the utilization of gravity-field related products and services towards their inclusion within a GGOS consistent frame meeting the necessary precision and accuracy requirements.

In this work, an outline is given on the recent activities of IGFS, namely those related to the contributions to the implementation of: the International Height Reference System/Frame; the Global Geodetic Reference System/Frame; the new Global Absolute Gravity Reference System/Frame and rhe combination of temporal monthly global gravity field models. Particularly, the impact that these activities have and will have in improving the estimation of the Earth’s gravity field, either at global and local scale, is highlighted also in the framework of GGOS.