Research on the Use Of Satellite Gravity Data for Gravity Gradients Modeling in The Vietnam Region

Abstract

Research on gravity gradients holds substantial importance across various scientific and practical domains, particularly in geophysics, geology, resource exploration, and Earth sciences. In addition to traditional gravity measurement techniques using ground-based, marine, or airborne equipment, numerous satellite gravity missions have been launched by agencies such as NASA and ESA. Notable examples include the CHAMP, GRACE, and GOCE missions. This paper investigates the use of several global geopotential models (GGMs), specifically Level 2 data products from the GOCE satellite mission, to determine gravity gradients over a localized region in Vietnam. Open-source software developed in MATLAB is used to process GOCE satellite gravity data and GGMs to compute the gravitational gradient tensor and the disturbing gradient tensor . These values are subsequently transformed into local gravitational gradient models in grid format Vxx , Vxy , Vxz , Vyy , Vyz , Vzz and visualized using the Global Mapper software . The standard deviation of the vertical gravitational component Vzz between the measurements at five points and the GGM GOCE model is 0.017 mGal/m. A comparison of the results calculated using the two software programs, GrafLab and Gravsoft, on 961 grid points also shows a high degree of consistency, with a standard deviation of only 0.0000013 mGal/m.