The Mass Change Designated Observable Study: Overview and Results

Wiese, D. N.; Bienstock, Bernard; Blackwood, Carmen; Chrone, Jon; Loomis, B. D.; Sauber, Jeanne; Rodell, Matthew; Baize, Rosemary R.; Bearden, David; Case, Kelley; Horner, Scott D.; Luthcke, S. B.; Reager, J. T.; Srinivasan, Margaret; Tsaoussi, Lucia; Webb, F.; Whitehurst, Amanda; Zlotnicki, Victor

doi:10.1002/essoar.10510754.1

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Our procedure follows established methods to simulate mass‐change missions (Loomis et al., 2012; Wiese et al., 2012, 2022). Table 1 reports the force models used in this study.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation of a Future SLR Satellite to Improve Low‐Degree Gravity Estimates

2022

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The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE; 2002–2017) and GRACE Follow‐On (2018‐present) have observed Earth's monthly mass change with unprecedented spatial resolution. These missions have long relied on satellite laser ranging (SLR) measurements to replace the C2,0 coefficient, which GRACE recovers poorly. Recent work has also shown the need for SLR‐determined C3,0 when GRACE operates with a single accelerometer. However, it was not until the 2012 launch of the Laser Relativity Satellite that the SLR data gained the sensitivity to recover C3,0 accurately. These low‐degree gravity coefficients represent large‐scale mass transport and small changes in their values have implications for ice sheet, ocean mass, and water storage estimates. To fully exploit SLR's utility for time‐variable gravity (TVG), future satellite orbits should be selected to maximize their sensitivity to the gravity field. In this work, we present results from a simulation study of a hypothetical SLR satellite in which we generate 1 year of data to satellites placed across varying inclinations. We also simulate seven current SLR satellites to show realistic improvements from the new satellite. When compared to the known truth input, a low‐inclination satellite (<∼ 45°) most improves the low‐degree gravity terms, especially the even zonals which show a significant decorrelation. From this, we investigate recovery of the annual variability in the simulated signal and find recovery of the sine component improves by up to 41%. This has important implications when considering future SLR satellites in the context of TVG.

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“…Our procedure follows established methods to simulate mass‐change missions (Loomis et al., 2012; Wiese et al., 2012, 2022). Table 1 reports the force models used in this study.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation of a Future SLR Satellite to Improve Low‐Degree Gravity Estimates

2022

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“…It is therefore likely the next mission beyond GRACE‐FO will additionally leverage international partnerships. A comprehensive study of potential observing system architectures for this mission was recently concluded as part of NASA's implementation program for Mass Change (Wiese et al., 2022).…”

Section: Future Advances and Potential Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote Sensing of Groundwater: Current Capabilities and Future Directions

Adams

Reager

Rosen

et al. 2022

Water Resources Research

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Groundwater is Earth's largest reservoir of fresh, liquid water. Accounting for more than 20% of water usage worldwide and 43% of irrigation water (Earman & Dettinger, 2011;Fetter, 2001;Zektser & Everett, 2004), groundwater serves as the primary source of freshwater for over 2 billion people across the globe (Alley et al., 2002;Famiglietti et al., 2011;Gleeson et al., 2012; WWAP, 2015). Its contributions are expected to increase with rising global population and changing climate, as surface water becomes a less reliable resource (FAO, 2005; OECD, 2011; WWAP, 2015). It is estimated that by 2050, 2 billion additional people will need to be fed, increasing demand on agricultural land use for improved rates of food production (OECD, 2011; WWAP, 2015). As climate change continues to alter patterns of drought and regional recharge dynamics, groundwater will continue to establish itself as an increasingly critical component of the water cycle, as groundwater variability directly impacts surface water (

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“…A dragcompensated system will be assumed. The assumptions on instrument performance are based on identified intersatellite ranging and accelerometer technologies for SmallSat technologies from the Mass Change Designated Observable Study Team [59].…”

Section: Simulation Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using a Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm to Design Satellite Constellations for Recovering Earth System Mass Change

2022

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The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) provided twenty years of data on Earth’s time-varying gravity field. Due to their design, GRACE and GRACE-FO are inherently limited in their spatiotemporal coverage, limiting their resolution to a few hundred kilometers and temporally to roughly monthly solutions. To increase the global spatiotemporal resolution and allow for the determination of submonthly time-varying gravity field signals, a constellation of GRACE-type satellite pairs is a possible path forward. Advances in small form factor instrumentation for small satellites have become progressively inexpensive, reliable, and of higher quality. This leads us to consider that a constellation of GRACE-type small satellites could be part of future gravimetric satellite missions. In this work, we investigate the viability and limitations of a genetic-algorithm-based optimization and its objective function to generate satellite constellations to recover daily Earth system mass changes. The developed approach is used to create satellite constellations that are optimally designed to recover gravity variations of sufficient resolution at a range of temporal frequencies (i.e., daily to monthly). We analyze a constellation’s performance using a combination of observability in space, accounting for directionality, and homogeneity in time. This allows us to navigate through a vast search space in a relatively short period of time and estimate the relative performance of constellations to each other. Using evolutionary theory, we converge towards a set of optimally selected orbits. The characteristics of the designed constellations have been validated using high-fidelity numerical simulations. We summarize these results and discuss their implications for possible future constellations of small GRACE-like satellite pairs. The resulting constellations have an inherently improved spatiotemporal performance, which reduces temporal aliasing errors and allows the characterization of daily mass-change effects.

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The Mass Change Designated Observable Study: Overview and Results

Cited by 3 publications

References 48 publications

Simulation of a Future SLR Satellite to Improve Low‐Degree Gravity Estimates

Simulation of a Future SLR Satellite to Improve Low‐Degree Gravity Estimates

Remote Sensing of Groundwater: Current Capabilities and Future Directions

Using a Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm to Design Satellite Constellations for Recovering Earth System Mass Change

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