The ESA Earth System Model (ESA ESM) provides a synthetic data set of the time-variable global gravity field that includes realistic mass variations in atmosphere, oceans, terrestrial water storage, continental ice sheets, and the solid Earth on a wide set of spatial and temporal frequencies. For more than 10 years already, it is widely applied as a source model in end-to-end simulation studies for future gravity missions, but has been also utilized to study novel gravity observing concepts on the ground. For those purposes, the ESM needs to include a wide range of signals even at very small spatial scales which might not yet have been reliably observed by any active satellite mission.
The updated ESA ESM 3.0 improves upon its predecessor by utilizing ECMWF’s ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis along with dedicated simulated ocean bottom pressure data from the MPIOM ocean model. In addition, it offers a small ensemble of co- and post-seismic earthquake signals, an updated GIA model, additional ice mass balance signals from previously not considered Arctic glaciers, sub-monthly surface-mass balance changes and a more realistic representation of ice sheet dynamics. Extreme hydrometeorological events as well as climate-driven and anthropogenic impacts on continental water storage are represented through an update of the hydrological component. Additionally, the ESM separately includes ocean bottom pressure variations along the western slope of the Atlantic, representing variations in the meridional overturning circulation as a critically important component of the interactively coupled global climate system as well as estimated trend signals from sediment erosion and subsequent marine deposition.
The ESA ESM 3.0 is available with a 6-hourly resolution from January 2007 until December 2020 in the from of Stokes coefficients up to degree and order 180.
The ability of any satellite gravity mission concept to monitor mass transport processes in the Earth system is typically tested well ahead of its implementation by means of various simulation studies. Those studies often extend from the simulation of realistic orbits and instrumental data all the way down to the retrieval of global gravity field solution time-series. Basic requirement for all these simulations are realistic representations of the spatio-temporal mass variability in the different sub-systems of the Earth, as a source model for the orbit computations.
For such simulations, a suitable source model is required to represent (i) high-frequency (i.e., sub- daily to weekly) mass variability in the atmosphere and oceans, in order to realistically include the effects of temporal aliasing due to non-tidal high-frequency mass variability into the retrieved gravity fields. In parallel, (ii) low-frequency (i.e., monthly to interannual) variability needs to be modelled with realistic amplitudes, particularly at small spatial scales, in order to assess to what extent a new mission concept might provide further insight into physical processes currently not observable.
The updated source model provided here attempts to fulfil both requirements: Based on ECMWF's recent atmospheric reanalysis ERA-Interim and corresponding simulations from numerical models of the other Earth system components, it offers spherical harmonic coefficients of the time-variable global gravity field due to mass variability in atmosphere, oceans, the terrestrial hydrosphere includ- ing the ice-sheets and glaciers, as well as the solid Earth. Simulated features range from sub-daily to multiyear periods with a spatial resolution of spherical harmonics degree and order 180 over a a period of 12 years. In addition to the source model, a de-aliasing model for atmospheric and oceanic high-frequency variability with augmented systematic and random noise is provided for a realistic simulation of the gravity field retrieval process.