A deep understanding of mass distribution and mass transport in System Earth is needed to answer central questions in hydrology, oceanography, glaciology, geophysics and climate research. The necessary information is primarily derived from satellite mission data as observed by GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) and GRACE-FO (Follow-on) describing gravity field of the Earth and its temporal variations.

The research group „New Refined Observations of Climate Change from Spaceborne Gravity Missions (NEROGRAV)” develops new analysis methods and modeling approaches to improve GRACE and GRACE-FO mission data analysis. The central hypothesis of the research group is therefore: Only by concurrently improving and better understanding of sensor data, background models, and processing strategies of satellite gravimetry, the resolution, accuracy, and long-term consistency of mass transport series from satellite gravimetry can be significantly increased; and only in that case the potential of future technological sensor developments can be fully exploited.

The research group was approved in December 2018 by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and will start working on 15th April 2019 along six individual projects (IP) during the initial phase of three years. Spokesman is Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Flechtner from TU Berlin and Head of Section 1.2.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Flechtner cooperates in IP4 „Optimized Space-Time Parameterization for GRACE and GRACE-FO data Analysis (OSTPAGA)“ with Prof. Dr. Roland Pail from TU Munich. Dr. Rolf König (head of section 1.2 working group 2) leads IP5 “Improved Stochastic Modeling in GRACE/GRACE-FO Real data processing (ISTORE)“.

Further information about the research group and its IPs can be found at the NEROGRAV web page.