DEVIATION OF THE SEA-LEVEL SURFACE FROM THE GEOID SURFACE

Abstract

Satellite altimetry can be used to determine the topography of the physical sea surface with an error of about 0.3 m and a lateral resolution of 30 to 80 km. This surface deviates from the geoid surface (GS) because of the effect of various hydrophysical factors. We shall demonstrate that the error in determining the GS is limited to long-wave errors of marine gravimetry. We analyze these errors in the case of the optimal kernels of the convolution integral, and we shall apply the principal results to the case of the northwestern Pacific Ocean. We have developed an effective algorithm for evaluating the convolution integral on a sphere which can also be applied to other problems of geophysics (filtering).