The development of physical geodesy during 1984-2014 – A personal review

摘要

This article is a personal review of the development of physical geodesy during 1984-2014. The period is characterized by an intensive advance in both data and theory to meet the growing technical demands in GPS/GNSS applications and scientific needs in geoscience. As a result,many parts of theworld are nowmapped with a 1cmdetailed geoid model, and the global long- to mediumwavelengths of the gravity field and geoid are homogeneously determined to 1 mGal and 1 cm by satellite-only dedicated satellite gravity missions. The future can expect to see even higher demands for accuracy and reliability to satisfy the specifications for a pure geoid model based vertical datum.