High-latitude gravity field recovery from CHAMP and its contribution to Earth monitoring

Introduction: • Concept of energy balance is applied for gravity field recovery. • The basic characteristic is the use of GPS derived position and velocity data and the correction for non-gravitational forces. • Purely kinematic CHAMP orbits avoid the contamination with a priori gravity field information but velocities have to be derived numerically. • Time-wise spherical harmonic analysis on a global scale. • Expected improvement for local gravity field recovery • Application in geodesy, geodynamics, geology, hydrology, glaciology, sea level, geophysical prospecting