SING

Future satellite gravimetry missions aim to improve our ability to observe changes in the Earth’s gravity field and to better understand how mass is redistributed over time. Different approaches, such as lower orbit altitudes, satellite constellations, or improved instrument accuracy, may help to increase the quality of the observations. However, each of these options has its own limitations, and their actual benefit is not always clear in advance.

Therefore, impact assessment studies of future satellite missions are important. They allow us to explore how different mission designs might perform using simulations and consistent analysis approaches, and to better understand which improvements are meaningful in practice.

As part of the Simulation of Next Generation Gravity Missions (SING) consortium, we study the impact of next-generation gravity missions, such as NGGM and MAGIC, on the estimation of Total Drainable Water Storage (TDWS). We focus on how the improvement in the sampling and spatial resolution effects specific TDWS-related results, in particular the potential for consistent monitoring of TDWS across different spatial scales.

In this context, our work is based on the analysis of simulated datasets from different mission scenarios using a common processing framework. We compare the resulting TDWS estimates to identify how changes in noise level, resolution, and sampling affect the results. This allows us to better understand under which conditions future missions may provide clear improvements for TDWS estimation.