Improving the determination of the gravity rate of change by combining superconducting with absolute gravimeter data

This paper evaluates different data-processing methods to determine the gravity rate of change, using repeated absolute gravimeter (AG) measurements and continuous monitoring by a superconducting gravimeter (SG). Based on synthetic data representative of signals observed by SGs at various station locations, we demonstrate that the addition of SG information mitigates the error in the estimation of gravity rates of change caused by the presence of long period, interannual, and annual signals in the AG data. These results are discussed as a function of the sampling rate of the absolute gravity measurements, the duration of the observations, and the uncertainties of the AGs. & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.