PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS ON GOCE CONTRIBUTION TO THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA CIRCULATION

摘要

One of the main objectives of the ESA Gravity field andrnOcean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) is to investigaternthe oceanic circulation by means of high accuracyrnsatellite gravity observations.rnIn this framework the Mediterranean Sea is certainly arncomplicated test area and the study of its circulation isrnparticularly tangled and requires the knowledge of arngeoid with extremely high resolution and accuracy.rnIn the present work a combination of the EGM2008rnglobal model and a GOCE-derived solution is used inrnconnection with the CNES-CLS11 mean sea surfacern(MSS) to estimate the Mediterranean geodetic meanrndynamic topography (MDT).rnIn order to assess the accuracy of the GOCE-derivedrnproducts for oceanographic purposes, the geostrophicrncurrents computed from geodetic MDT are compared tornthose obtained with independent drifter observations. Itrncomes out that the GOCE solution well describes thernmean circulation patterns and the main dynamicalrnfeatures improving the EGM2008 solution.