MATLAB tools for the post-processing of GRACE temporal gravity field solutions

We present a collection of MATLAB tools for the post-processing of temporal gravity field solutions from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission. GRACE final products are in the form of monthly sets of spherical harmonic coefficients and have been extensively used by the scientific community to study the land surface mass redistribution that is predominantly due to ice melting, glacial isostatic adjustment, seismic activity and hydrological phenomena. Since the launch of GRACE satellites, a substantial effort has been made to develop processing strategies and improve the surface mass change estimates.

The MATAB software presented in this work is developed and used by the Gravity and Earth Observation group at the department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary. A variety of techniques and tools for the processing of GRACE data are implemented, tested and analyzed. Some of the software capabilities are: filtering of GRACE data using decorrelation and smoothing techniques, conversion of gravity changes into mass changes on the Earth’s spherical, ellipsoidal and topographical surface, implementation of forward modeling techniques for the estimation and removal of long-term trends due to ice mass melting, basin-specific spatial averaging in the spatial and spectral domain, time series smoothing and decomposition techniques, and data visualization.

All tools use different levels of parameterization in order to assist both expert users and non-specialists. Such a software makes the comparison between different GRACE processing methods and parameters used easier, leading to optimal strategies for the estimation of surface mass changes and to the standardization of GRACE data post-processing. It could also facilitate the use of GRACE data to non-geodesists.