Height System Unification with GOCE – Overview and Selected Results
Gruber, Thomas¹; Rummel, Reiner¹; Sideris, Michael²; Rangelova, Elena²; Woodworth, Phil³; Hughes, Chris³; Ihde, Johannes⁴; Liebsch, Gunter⁴; Schäfer, Uwe⁴; Rülke, Axel⁴; Gerlach, Christian⁵; Haagmans, Roger^6
1Technical University Munich, GERMANY; ²University of Calgary, CANADA; ³National Oceanography Centre Liverpool, UNITED KINGDOM; ⁴Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie, Frankfurt/Main, GERMANY; ⁵Kommission für Erdmessung und Glaziologie, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, GERMANY; ⁶European Space Agency, NETHERLANDS

GOCE will allow the determination of geoid heights with an accuracy of 1-2cm and spatial resolution of about 100 km. An important application that will benefit from this is the global unification of the (over 100) existing height systems. GOCE will provide three important components of height unification: highly accurate potential differences (geopotential numbers), a global geoid- or quasi-geoid-based reference surface for elevations that will be independent of inaccuracies and inconsistencies of local and regional data, and a consistent way to refer to the same datum all the relevant gravimetric, topographic and oceanographic data. The paper summarizes results of a project supported by the European Space Agency, whose main goal is to identify the impact of GOCE gravity field models on world height system unification.