Geophys. J. Int, (1995) 122, 551-S68 Gravity anomal s derived from Seasat, Geosat, ERS-1 and TOPEX/POSEIDON altimetry and ship gravit; a case study over the Reykjanes Ridge Cheinway Hwang* and Barry Parsons Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford University. Parks Road, Oxford OX\ 3PR, UK Accepted 1995 February 20. Received 1995 February 20: in original form 1994 November 7 SUMMARY We have employed least-squares collocation to derive a gravity field over the Reykjanes Ridge using Seasat, Geosat/ERM, ERS-1 and TOPEX/POSEIDON altimeter data combined with ship gravity. To avoid a crossover adjustment to correct for orbital errors we used mean geoid gradients, which were obtained by averaging gradients over 60, 10 and 36 repeat cycles for Geosat/ERM, ERS-1 and TOPEX/POSEIDON. respectively. The average standard deviations for the Geosat/ERM, ERS-1 and TOPEX/POSEIDON mean gradients are 1.12, 3.25 and 2.01 wrad respectively. The standard deviations of the ship gravity, which were assigned based on weightings derived from an analysis of crossing differences, range from 6.72 to 20.17 mgal. The necessary covariances for the least-squares collocation computations were derived using the law of covariance propagation. Before merging with the altimeter data, the ship gravity for each leg was adjusted by removing a quadratic polynomial in time in order to match a satellite-only gravity field in a least-squares sense. The result of the adjustment suggests that most of the ship gravity data collected in the 1960s and the 1970s have average offsets of about 14mgal, which is close to the offset of the Potsdam Datum. The rms difference between the satellite-only gravity, derived using least-squares collocation, and the adjusted ship gravity is 7.10mgal, smaller than the rms difference of 12.47 mgal between the satellite-only gravity derived by a Fourier transform method and the adjusted ship gravity. The rms difference between the combined gravity field. derived from both altimetry and ship gravity. and the adjusted ship gravity 2.65 mgal, suggesting that the former has successfully absorbed the high-frequency component of the gravity signal provided by the latter. The combined gravity field thus features a regionally uniform medium resolution from altimetry and a locally high resolution from ship gravity. The average accuracy estimate given by least-squares collocation for the combined gravity is 5.76mgal. The combined gravity field reveals detailed tectonic structures over the Reykjanes Ridge related to the interaction of the Iceland hot spot and sea-floor spreading at the ridge. Key words: altimetry, covariance function, geoid gradient, least-squares collocation, ship gravity. RS-1 and TOPEX/POSEIDON INTRODUCTION Over the past two decades, altimeter measurements from Geos-3, Seasat, and Geosat have made significant contributions to geodesy, geophysics and oceanography. * Now at: Department of Civil Engineering. National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30050, Taiwan. ‘Ongoing missions such as (T/P) continue to collect altimeter data, adding to the coverage of existing altimeter data in both space and time. Apart from the noise level for Geos-3 of about I metre. all other missions yielded range measurements with noises of the order of a decimetre or lower. The 2-D resolution of satellite-derived gravity is primarily controlled by the spacing between adjacent satellite ground tracks. McAdoo 55152 C. Hwang and B. Parsons & Marks (1992) pointed out that the current 2-D resolution is about ISkm for gravity derived from the Geosat Geodetic Mission (GM) altimetry, and 66km_ using the first six months of ERS-I Interim Geophysical Data Records. Including Seasat_and Geosat/ERM data in this analy would probably increase the resolution only marginall Once data from more closely spaced ERS-1 ground tracks become available. the resolution anywhere willbe comparable with that now obtainable with Geosat GM data, which is currently only available for latitudes south of 30°S. None the less, if one is seeking to obtain the highest possible resolution, all sources of gravity information should be considered. An obvious additional source is ship gravity, which is abundant in many regions of tectonic interest and contains a wealth of short-wavelength information. How- ver. in nearly all previous studies that derived gravity fields based on satellite altimetry, ship gravity was used only as an independent source for checking the quality of the computed gravity anomalies, rather than as an additional data set Least-squares collocation (LSC) provides a natural way of combining altimetry and ship gravity. Examples of the use of least-squares colocation to calculate gravity anomalies are the works by Rapp (1979, 1985), Hwang (1989), Knudsen (1991), and Rapp & Basic (1992), who all used altimeter data alone, Another commonly used method for altimetry. gravity conversion is that based on Fourier transforms (FT), ‘examples being Haxby et al, (1983), Freedman & Parsons (1986), Sandwell and McAdoo (1988, 1990), Sandwell (1992) and McAdoo & Marks (1992). The FT method, while being very efficient computationally, is not easily adaptable to include more than one type of potential field data. The LSC method, on the other hand, needs more computer time but has the capability to combine heterogeneous data and to give accuracy estimates for the computed gravity anomalies. Recent applications of the Fourier transform methods (Sandwell 1992; McAdoo & Marks 1992) have made use of geoid gradients or deflections of the vertical derived from the sea-surface height measurements. In most of the previous studies using LSC, the sea-surface heights, which approximately equivalent to geoidal heights, were used directly. The errors in sea-surface heights caused by non-spatially correlated orbit errors can be treated by a simple crossover adjustment to remove the biases or biases plus linear trends of the ares in the work area (Knudsen 1987), By using deflections of the vertical, however, it is possible to remove the bias of an are without crossover adjustment with only negligible errors left in the data (Sandwell 1984), In this study, we will use geoid gradient (i.e. deflection of the vertical with the sign reversed) as the altimeter data type when employing the LSC method. The LSC method is able to combine directly geoid gradients from satellites with different inclinations, rather than resorting to the iterative procedure that is needed in the FT method (Sandwell 1992), In what follows, we derive a gravity field for the area surrounding the Reykjanes Ridge (Fig. 1) in order to illustrate the application of least-squares collocation to calculate gravity anomalies using both geoid gradients and ship gravity. The geoid gradient values are derived from Seasat, Geosat/ERM, ERS-1 and T/P altimetry, and the ship gravity is from a global compilation of the holdings of the major geophysical data centres. The area chosen has the advantage, because of its high latitude, that the satel tracks have about one-half of the cross-track spacing seen at the equator. It also has good ship-track coverage. In order to combine ship gravity with the altimeter data, it is first necessary to correct the ship gravity for long-wavelength errors. We describe a procedure for doing this by com- paring the ship gravity with gravity anomalies derived from satellite data alone. THE METHOD OF LEAST-SQUARE: COLLOCATION The LSC method, used in this study to calculate gravity anomalies from satellite altimeter data and ship gravity data, has been well documented elsewhere. for example Tscherning & Rapp (1974) and Moritz (1980). and we provide only a brief outline here. Following Rapp & Basic (1992), we first remove a reference field prior to applying least-squares collocation and then restore it afterwards: the reference field used was the OSU9IA geopotential model (Rapp, Wang & Pavlis 1991). The expressions used are serteutaal gy) (Sy) tse 3, = Cy (Cige an) ” Yet, Cae) 1 Cha)” «(ee cia, *P,,) (ey) o In the above two equations, e and Ag are vectors containing residual geoid gradients and residual gravity anomalies, ic. after removal of the reference field. The covariance matrices C,,, Cogn and Crpry are for gradient-gradient, gravity anomaly-gradient_and_ gravity anomaly-gravity anomaly respectively, and contain an error part implied by the errors in the coefficients of the reference field, and a signal part implied by a degree variance model; here we use that of Tscherning & Rapp (Tscherning & Rapp 1974, eq. (25); Appendix A). The superscript ‘s' denotes a covariance matrix between the predicted value and the observables (in e,Ag) and ‘o’ denotes a covariance between the observables. The diagonal matrices D, and Dy, contain the noise variances of geoid gradients and ship gravity anomalies, respectively: or, are the a posteriori estimates of variances in the predicted gravity field. Ag,.¢ is the reference gravity anomaly computed from the OSU91A model. If ship gravity data is lacking in a prediction cell, or if a gravity ficld derived only from altimeter data is required, only the matrices C3,,, C2, and D,, and the vector € will be present in eqs (1) and (2). ‘An important issue concerns the optimum maximum harmonic degree for the reference field. In a theoretical study, Wang (1993) suggested that, when using an FFT method for geoid-gravity conversion, the optimum maxi- mum degree should be the highest degree of the reference field used, provided that, in the computation of Ag... the geopotential coefficients are scaled by the quotients between degree variance and the sum of degree variance and error degree variance. The use of the quotients will effectively315° 330° Gravity anomalies from altimeter data 553 335° 340° Faeroe Plateau AU 45° 335° 340° 345° Figure 1. Bathymetry (solid lines, contour interval = 500 m) and sea-floor age (dotted lines, contour interval ~ 10 Ma) over the area studied. downweight the high-degree coefficients, as these coefficients will normally have larger errors than the lower degrees. A similar situation can be found in the LSC process, where we take into account the error degree variances of the field in computing the covariance functions (see Appendix A). Although the use of a high-degree reference field will increase the errors of the reference values, the inclusion of error degree variances will balance the signal and error budgets in such a manner that the predicted gravity anomaly has the property of minimum error variance. Also, the maximum degree must be compatible in resolution with the inversion cell size, which is a half-degree plus a data border of the same width for this study. This discussion leads to the choice of degree 360 as the maximum degree for the OSUSIA field. The required covariance functions can be derived using the law of covariance propagation (Moritz 1980, p. 86). A detailed derivation of the covariance functions needed in this study are given in Appendix A. Fig, 2 shows some of the global, ie. unscaled, covariance functions, with the reference field of OSU9IA to degree 360 removed. In the actual calculations, the inversion was applied to a half-degree cell with data selected from the cell and a half-degree data border about the cell (see Hwang 1989; Rapp & Basic 1992), The global residual covariance functions (see eq. A3) were scaled to local residual covariance functions [to be used in (2) and 2)] using the weighted mean of two values, one from the ratio between the variance of geoid gradients estimated in the cell and the value C,(0)=Cyym(0) (see Appendix A for notation), the other from the ratio between the variance of the ship gravity anomalies and the value Cycag(0)- Fig. 3(a) shows the histogram of the scale factors554 C. Hwang and B. Parsons 4009, — ae g g covariance (mgal""2) 5 8 Fa + Scares eel (b) C = ec me ; Figure 2. Global covariance functions, with the reference field of OSUSIA to degree 360 removed: (a) covariance between gravity anomaly Cases. (b) covariance between the longitudinal component of geoid gradient and gravity anomaly Cisg, (€) covariances of the longitudinal and transverse components of geoid gradient Cy, and Game See Appendix. A for notation. for the Reykjanes Ridge from 2400 cells when using altimeter data alone, whereas Fig. 3(b) shows that for the case where both altimeter and ship gravity were used. From Fig. 3 we see that the scale factors are mainly less than unity, suggesting that the factor A in the Tscherning-Rapp degree variance model (see eq. A2) and the error degree variances of OSU9IA are too large for the gravity field over the Reykjanes Ridge (for a geoid gradient the former has the dominant effect on the total covariance, based on a comparison between signal and error covariances). A scale factor will not change the correlation length of the covariance function, but will scale the variance and the curvature parameter [see Moritz (1980, p. 174) for the definitions of the three quantities]. Moreover, a scale factor of less than one will reduce the standard deviation of the predicted gravity anomaly as compared to the case of using the unscaled global covariance functions. ‘An inversion-free algorithm was used to implement eqs (1) and (2). Rewriting eqs (1) and (2) for the case of multi-point prediction, the residual gravity anomalies, contained in vector s, and their error covariance matrix, contained in matrix ©,, can be calculated formally as s=C,€°'1=(G"'C,)"(G"') =B"y, 3) 3, =C,-C,6°'C,, =, -B'B, “ where C,, is the transpose of C,,, the matrix of covariances between the predicted gravity values and the observed quantities; G is the lower triangular matrix in the Cholesky decomposition of €, namely, C= GG", where © is the matrix containing covariances relating each observable to the others plus the error covariances: and I is a vector containing the observations, i.e. geoid gradients or ship gravity, with a reference field removed; C, is the covariance matrix of gravity anomalies. The vector y ~ ‘I, along with each column of B=G~'C, is obtained by forward substitutions. Furthermore, let B= (by.by,....b,.), where b, is the ith column vector of B. Then, we can obtain the error variance of the ith component in s by calculating only the norm of b,, namely, 5,= Co biby, (5) which saves substantial computer time. ALTIMETER MEASUREMENTS AND DATA AVERAGING In using satellite altimeter data, the systematic errors and data noise must be taken into account and we shall investigate these first in order to select a suitable altimeter data type. It is known that the sea-surface height, h, obtained by differencing the ellipsoidal height and the altimeter range, consists of the geoidal height (N), the time-dependent and time-independent sea-surface topog- raphy, the radial orbit error, and errors due to improper geophysical corrections (Wunsch & Gaposchkin 1980). The radial orbit error has its dominant energy at the zero frequency (the bias), and at a frequency of one cycle per revolution has a wavelength of 40.000 km (Sandwell 1984), For an area without energetic ocean circulation, such as the Reykjanes Ridge, the sea-surface topography, if obtained by averaging data over a sufficiently long time, also has a60 & 40 > 3 2 5 8 S £ 20 0 0 1 scale factor (a) Gravity anomalies from altimeter data 585 20 1 2 scale factor (b) Figure 3. Histograms of factors for scaling the global covariance functions: (a) scale factors for the altimeter data alone, and (b) scale factors, for altimeter and ship data together. dominant feature at long wavelengths. Thus in an area of size no larger than a few thousand km, the sea-surface height may be expressed as h=N+atbs, ©) where s is the along-track distance and a and b represent the bias and linear trend representing the separation between N and h caused by sea-surface topography and the dominant orbit errors. By taking the along-track gradient of the sea-surface height, we get the geoid gradient, plus an error term 6, namely a Now the theory of LSC requires that the data used should be centred (Moritz 1980, p. 76). To achieve this we may in practice treat each of the satellite passes over the work area separately to remove the mean value of ah/as. By doing this, the bias b will be automatically eliminated. Thus geoid gradients as derived from the de-meaned ah/as are in principle free from the systematic error introduced by the long-wavelength sea-surface topography and the once-per- revolution orbit error. This error-free condition is nearly satisfied when using a small prediction cell (for example less than 1°X 1° as in this study), where b is very likely to be a constant. Furthermore, it is known that the gravity anomaly, which differs from gravity disturbance by a very small amount, and geoid gradient are both distance derivatives of the Earth's disturbing potential (Heiskanen & Moritz 1985). Thus, in theory, predicting the gravity anomaly from the geoid gradient is more stable than doing so using geoidal heights. Another advantage of using geoid gradients is that we do not need to adjust the sea-surface height as in Knudsen (1987). Sandwell (1992, p. 438) and Sandwell & Zhang (1989) provide further discussions on the advantages of using geoid gradient as the altimeter data type. Further- more, by analogy with the treatment of crossover-adjusted sea-surface heights, which are correlated due to the application of orbit corrections, we have ignored the correlation between two successive along-track gradients and kept the matrix D, in eqs (1) and (2) diagonal. The altimeter data used in this study are from four satellite missions: Seasat, Geosat/ERM, ERS-1 and TOPEX/POSEIDON, in the form of geoid gradients. In order to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio and remove data ‘zaps we average the geoid gradients from a number of cycles as in Sandwell & McAdoo (1990). The sea-surface heights derived from the one-per-second range measurements were used for the averaging, The Geosat/ERM gradients were averaged over 60 17-day repeat cycles (Cheney et al. 1987) For ERS-I, the gradients were averaged over the first 10 35-day cycles, using the Interim Geophysical Data Records produced by Cheney, Lillibridge & McAdoo (1991). The T/P gradients were from AVISO (1992) and were averaged over the first 36 10-day cycles. For the averaging process, we first estimate geoid gradients for each pass (half a revolution) by taking along-track differences between two successive sea-surface height measurements that are less than 2s apart. As the nominal ground track for a satellite pass, we choose points at integral seconds before and after the equator crossing of the pass. The standard errors in the averaged geoid gradients were also calculated. Seasat does not have repeat tracks, so a uniform standard deviation of 10yrad was assigned to the gradient data using the approximate formula o2=(07 + 03)/d?=20°/d?, where o=Sem is Seasat’s noise level, and d=6.73km is the approximate along-track spacing. Owing to the large difference in accuracy between the Seasat and Geosat data, we removed collinear Seasat tracks (within 7km of Geosat/ERM tracks) to avoid possible spurious effects due to the close spacing. Fig. 4 shows the ground tracks for each satellite over the Reykjanes Ridge. The improvement of the556 C. Hwang and B. Parsons gees Way anor) Figure 4, Satcllite ground tracks over the Reykjanes Ridge: (a) Seasat, (b) Geosat/ERM, (c) ERS-1, and (d) TOPEX/POSEIDON. Seasat tracks with distances to Geosat/ERM less than 7km are removed prior to calculation of a gravity field signal-to-noise ratio due to averaging is substantial; in the case of the average Geosat data an improvement factor of up to 7.5 was obtained (Strange 1991). To see the effect of averaging we show in Fig. 5 the stacked ERS-1 and T/P gradient profiles across the Reykjanes Ridge. As seen from Fig. 5, the average gradient is much smoother than the gradients from individual passe: Figure 6 shows the histograms of the standard deviations of the mean along-track geoid gradients from Geosat/ERM, ERS-I and T/P for the global data sets and for the Reykjanes Ridge. Table 1 summarizes the percentages of the standard deviations from within 1 rad to within 5 rad. ‘The rms powers of the observed geoid gradients from Seasat, Geosat, ERS-1, and T/P are 20.70, 17.64, 14.86 and 19.65 rad respectively, and are substantially larger than their corresponding standard deviations (or noise). Note that the inclination of a satellite will also affect the magnitude of the geoid gradient, because, for example, a ground track perpendicular to the Reykjanes Ridge results in larger along-track gradients than a track parallel to the ridge does. Based on Table 1 and Fig. 6, the standard deviations of the average gradients appear to be governed by the number of cycles used, rather than the total time interval over which the averages are taken. For example, the ERS-1 gradients (averaged over 10 cycles) and T/P gradients (averaged over 36 cycles) represent almost theta Loren 1100 bari Winn Viet 200 avery Pilon asi ll A, passat tay va g 700 - aunty 5 perenne I A Wa 5 | poy HINO a gy & 00 ww S \ wr vay i tn YH la 800 f yy fyator Wim bay Ausyad yl Jyptteanel MMA ba Hh 100 | marae yp eyetlaun le yh peal Sereno ARAL 100, = 58 6062S latitude (degroe) Wau e Areva tioo [i wu jh A raat May ep {ya 900 ieaiall Hi J a iN ined stmt oy ih Rey byl rl rat a ih 3 I 300 dat ap Harland 100 i ni , h iw oven tn vow vel sat AMPH geoid gradient (microradians) a ade ‘ -t09 L___ 56 58 60 62 4 latitude (degree) Figure 5. Stacked geoid gradients from pass a467 of ERS-1 (upper) and from pass 170 of TOPEX/POSEIDON (lower), which all travel across the Reykjanes Ridge. The ERS-I gradients are plotted every cycle beginning at Cycle 1, while the TOPEX/POSEIDON gradients are plotted every third cycle beginning at Cycle 3. The bottom line in cach of the plots corresponds 10 the average gradients (based on 10 cycles for ERS-1 and 36 cycles for T/P). Gravity anomalies from altimeter data 557 same time interval, but the former has a higher standard deviation than the latter. The standard deviations of the average gradients from the first 10 cycles of T/P (about 100 days) have a mean value of 4.37 rad, higher than that from the 10 ERS-I cycles (see Table 1), despite the fact that T/P has better instrumental accuracy than ERS-l. Factors such as the time-varying component of the sea-surface will create a data noise which cannot be removed or reduced if the time of data averaging is not sufficiently long. Also, Yale & Sandwell (1994) found that sea-surface heights measured from individual altimeter passes increase in wavelength resolution for the satellites according to the order T/P, Geosat, ERS-1, suggesting that the pre-stacked noise level of ERS-1 is the largest and that of T/P is the smallest. The consistency of the LSC method using geoid gradients as the potential field data, with the covariance functions described above, was tested with the following experiment We computed the north-south and west-east components of geoid gradients on a 2’ x2" grid using gradient data from the four satellites, Next we interpolated the two components to the actual subsatellite points and resolved the along-track gradients using ep £pcosap + npsinap, where ep is the along-track gradient, ay is the track azimuth, and &,, mp are the north-south and west-east components of the gradient at point P. Fig. 7 shows the histograms of the differences between the predicted and the observed along-track gradients for Seasat, Geosat/ERM, ERS-1 and T/P. The statistics show that the rms differences in the four cases are 3.13, 1.30, 147 and 1.68 zrad with the means being 0.05, ~0.04, =0.05 and 0.13 rad. The discrepancies are all within the noise levels of the individual satellite data sets, and are about 5 to 15 per cent of the rms powers of the signals. The large difference for Seasat is due to the assigned 10 jrad noise, which gives less weight to the Seasat data in the LSC computation of geoid gradients as compared to the others. In general, data with larger errors will be more difficult to ‘reproduce’ in the LSC process than those with less noi Furthermore, despite the fact that ERS-1 has a larger noise level than the T/P (see Table 1), the difference between the predicted and observed gradients in the former case is smaller. This is probably due to the denser data coverage of ERS-1, causing the predicted gradients to be dominated by the ERS-1 observables. THE AZIMUTH OF AN ALONG-TRACK GEOID GRADIENT In calculating the covariance functions used in the LSC calculations (Appendix A), the azimuth of an along-track geoid gradient is needed. One way to calculate the azimuth is numerical differentiation, as follows: (8) where, in a planar approximation, Ax = R cos ($)(Az— Ay). Ay = R(b>~ $y), with 4, and A, being latitudes and longitudes at the endpoints and the mean latitude, Because the distance between two successive subsatellite points is small—it is 6 to 7km for most of the satellites—this numerical approximation may yield reasonable results, However, it is more convenient computationally to use a theoretical expression for the azimuth. The approximate mean motion of the satellite relative to the ascending node558 C. Hwang and B. Parsons ERM ERS-1 TIP 70 704 ee 60 6 60 B50 50 50 Z.0 “0 40 S Bx 20 30 a © 20 20 20 10 10 10 ° ° ° 012345678 012345678 012345678 std. dev. (microrad) std. dev. (microrad) _std. dev. (microrad) (a) ERM ERS-1 TIP 70+ 70 + 70 60 60 60 B50 50 50 +0 my ” S 8 x0 30 30 a © 20 20 20 10 10 10 ° fo ° 012345678 012345678 012345678 std. dev. (microrad) std. dev. (microrad) _ std. dev. (microrad) (b) Figure 6. Histograms of the standard deviations of the geoid gradients from Geosat/ERM, ERS-1 and T/P for (a) global coverage, and (b) the Reykjanes Ridge area alone, Table 1. Percentages of standard deviations forthe geoid gradients is given by within 1, 23,4 and 5 jrad for (a) the global coverage and (b) the Reykjanes ridge a-o+m, ©) (a) Satelite <1 <2 <3 <8 <3 Mean where «and M are the average velocities of the perigee and Geosat 72.27 95.67 9882 99.06 9.45097 the mean anomaly, respectively, which can be calculated by ERS-1 210 22.79 5836 80.67 056 3.10 (Kaula, 1966): TP 016 6316 9417 97.71 98RD 203 3nCaoaz 2 ) = yaad ~ Sos"), (10) Satellite <1 <2 <3 <4 <5 Mean MU e)a) Geosat 42.64 976699279955 9741.12 ; ERS] 113.1702 S107 7668 89.51 325 3nCaoas ve 006 6262 96st 98209895201 A eas Okt De ayfrequency (%) % 8 o4 | 10-5 0 5 10 -10-5 0 5 10 difference (microrad) difference (microrad) (a) (b) z > 2 } $ z g -10 -5 0 5 10 -10 -5 0 5 10 diference (microrad) _diference (ricrorad) (o) (d) Figure 7. Histograms of differences between predicted and observed along-track geoid gradients for (a) Seasat, (b) Geosat/ERM. (c) ERS-1 and (d) TOPEX/POSEIDON. with Ve (12) where a and ¢ are the semimajor axis and the eccentricity of the satellite's orbital ellipse respectively, i the inclination, a, the semimajor axis of the Earth’s reference ellipsoid and Cay the second zonal harmonic coefficient (for example Cy = ~ 10826255596 x 10~° from GEM-T3). In practice, we may use a=R+H, where R=637ikm and H is the satellite’s mean altitude (H = 800, 800, 782, 1336km for Seasat, Geosat, ERS-1 and T/P respectively). As shown in Fig. 8, the azimuth can be determined from the direction of flight of the satellite projected onto the ground. The two components of the projected velocity of the satellite at the subsatellite point in the local coordinate system are v, = R(w sin B — w, cos #), v, = Ri cos B. Thus usin B~ w.cos Ame eccne 13) weosB w where 2 sin" (4) «sy 0s and 1 is the geocentric latitude, which can be determined from the geodetic latitude using tan y= (1 —e) tan d, with € being the eccentricity of the reference ellipsoid. .~@ is the Earth’s rotational velocity relative to, Gravity anomalies from altimeter data 559 equator ground track P parallel y, meridian Figure 8 Geometry used to calculate the azimuth a of an along-track geoid gradient at subsatellite point P; X, ¥, Z are the inertial coordinates and GM is the Greenwich Meridian, the orbital plane. The secular precession rate of the orbital plane can be determined from 3nCroa2 ts cos 15} mere (1s) ‘The formula for a given here is similar to that in Sandwell (1992), but derived with a different approach; we used this formula to compute the azimuths of the along-track geoid gradients needed in the expressions for the covariance matrices. SHIP GRAVITY The ship gravity used consists of the free-air gravity anomalies in a global data base at Oxford compiled from the holdings of the major data centres. Fig. 9 shows the data distribution over the Reykjanes Ridge. Wessel & Watts (1988) have pointed out that ship gravity is affected by several sources of long-wavelength errors, for example drift of the gravimeter, uncertainty about the reference field used, absence of base-station ties. In the following section we describe an empirical method of correcting for these long-wavelength errors by comparison with a gravity field derived from altimetry alone. Here we are concerned with the problem of assigning standard deviations to the ship gravity for use in the least-squares collocation calculations. We start with the results of the crossover adjustment of Wessel & Watts (1988), and make an assumption that the adjusted ship gravity anomalies contain only random noise due to instruments and are free from the systematic errors discussed by Wessel & Watts (1988). At a crossover point p, the discrepancy di* is the difference between the meas-560 C. Hwang and B. Parsons 315" as & 315" 320° 325° Figure 9. Ground-track coverage of ship gravity for the Reykjanes Ridge arca. ‘The thick lines correspond to the tracks for cruises ©2112 (left ‘and 2302 (right). urements gi, and gf from two cruises (or legs) j and k dit = gi — gh (16) In the absence of systematic errors, the expectation of the crossover discrepancy is then zero, namely, Eds) =d=0, (7) and its variance on using error propagation is Vid) = 07 + 0%, (18) where we assume that all measurements on a cruise have the same error variance and the measurements on two different cruises are uncorrelated. Moreover, the mean squared crossover discrepancy for the adjusted ship gravity can be expressed as 3 at-a get : a9) where m is the number of crossovers. Assuming that the process leading to crossing errors is stationary, namely. all the crossovers are treated as repeat realizations of some event at a single point, then eq. (19) is immediately transformed to the formula for the estimation of the variance of the crossover errors V(diS) (n must be sufficiently large). If we further assume that all cruises have uniform standard deviation, namely 0} = 07, =o for any Usk, then from egs (18) and (19) we obtain 20 = S*. 20) Using $= 13.96 mgal, which is the rms crossover dis- crepancy of the adjusted ship gravity from Wessel & Watts (1988), then o = 9.87 mgal, which represents the overall standard deviation of the ship gravity. In Wessel & Watt's (1988) study, the quality of the ship gravity from a particular cruise is represented by the cruise’s weight, which ranges from I to 10, The weights are derived from a crossover analysis of the ship gravity using a DC shift and linear drift model, and the higher the weight the better the quality. We will now use the weights to assign standard deviations to different cruises. In the theory of parameter estimation, weights are commonly taken to be inversely proportional to error variance, ic. oO, = oly, Ql) where o3 is a scale factor and w is the weight. In the so-called Gauss-Markoff model, the method for estimating o% may be found in, for example, Koch (1987, Section 3),In the present study, we assume the average standard deviation is the weighted mean given by = (22) = n,, where 7,, is the number of cruises with weight w. In Wessel & Watts’ study the number of cruises with weights from 1 to 10 are 30, 31, 17, 27, 707, 13, 13, 9, 11, 2, respectively. This information, together with the assumption that the numbers of crossovers on all cruises are the same, leads to the estimate 20.17 mgal. With this value, we can then assign a standard deviation to each cruise, resulting in the weight-standard deviation relationship in Table 2, For cruises not listed in Table Al of Wessel & Watts, the weights are assigned according to the years of data collection as follows: before 1965. the weights are identically 1; from 1965 on, the weights are increased by 1 every two years: after 1981, the weights are identically 10, Such an estimate of weights is based upon the ship's navigation systems, which have improved over time and are the major factor governing the accuracy of ship gravity. There are 68 ship cruises over the Reykjanes Ridge, 46 of which have over 100 gravity measurements in the area. A. remaining question concerns the proper relative weightings of altimeter gradients and ship gravity in the LSC solution, Assuming that a I rad error in geoid gradient corresponds to a 0.98 mgal error in gravity, we find that the standard deviations of the ship gravity are higher than those of the averaged geoid gradients from altimetry given in Table 1. However, to make a fair comparison, one would have to use the noise level of geoid gradients from a single satellite pass. Seasat’s 10 arad noise and Geosat/GM’s 6 urad noise (Sandwell 1992) show that non-repeat satellite data and ship data may have roughly similar noise levels, and thus it will be appropriate to use the currently estimated standard deviations of the altimeter gradients and ship gravity for weightings. A rigorous treatment of the problem of properly weighting individual data sets might resort to a method similar in principle to MINQUE described in Rao & Kletfe (1988). In order to investigate further the problem of estimating the noise level of the ship gravity, we carried out the following experiment. We resampled the gravity data at a 2km interval (the average spacing) along cruise ¢2115, which has a weight of 5 and an almost straight ground track, A spectral analysis of the data was then made to determine the power spectra as functions of wavelength. It was found that the spectra become ‘flat’ or white for wavelengths less ‘Table 2. Weights of ship cruises and as: sociated standard deviations (in meal) of ship gravity measurements, Weight Std. dev. Weight Std. dev. 1 20.17 6 824 2 14.26 7 162 3 1165 8 13 4 10.09 9 67 5 9.02 10 638 Gravity anomalies from altimeter data 561 than 6 km, giving an rms power of 1.17 mgal for the noise. This value may reflect the intrinsic measurement noise of the instrument. However, the overall accuracy of ship gravity belonging to a cruise is governed by many other factors, for example, for some types of gravimeter, the accuracy with which cross-coupling to horizontal accelera- tions can be determined, and we cannot obtain an accurate estimate of the noise level without better knowledge of these error sources. This should explain why the noise ‘floor’ for c2115 is inconsistent with the assigned standard deviation ‘of 9.02 mgal given in Table 2. THE ADJUSTMENT OF SHIP GRAVITY USING SATELLITE-ONLY GRAVITY It is also necessary to account for the long-wavelength errors in ship gravity, such as mechanical drift of the gravimeter, off-levelling, incorrect ties to base stations and inconsistent use of a reference field, as pointed out in Wessel & Watts (1988). Fig, 10 shows examples of comparisons between observed ship gravity and gravity anomalies interpolated ‘onto the same ship track from a gravity field on a 2’ x2’ gtid predicted using least-squares collocation from the altimeter-derived gradients alone. The ship gravity is clearly offset from the satellite-only gravity, and the offset varies with time. If the ship gravity and altimetry are to be used together to predict a combined gravity field, these differences must be corrected for. The geoid gradients derived from the sea-surface heights for the four satellites refer to different ellipsoids: the Seasat data were adjusted by a bias and trend model (Liang 1983) and the height system will refer to the ‘master’ ares used in the adjustment; the Geosat/ERM data refer to the GRS80 ellipsoid (Cheney et al. 1987): the ERS-I data also refer to the GRS80 system (Cheney ef al. 1991); the T/P data refer to an ellipsoid with a semimajor axis of 6378 136.3 m and a flattening of 1/298.257 (AVISO 1992). The difference in the semimajor axis of the reference ellipsoid between two different satellite data sets has not been a problem since, in an area the size of the Reykjanes Ridge, any differences are basically constant and hence willbe removed upon differencing the sea-surface heights to obtain gradients. Thus the reference geopotential field used in the LSC will govern the definition of the ellipsoidal system for the satel derived gravity anomalies, Hence the gravity anomalies derived from the altimeter data in this study will refer to the gravity system implied by the OSU9LA model. Note that 0.87 mgal should be added to the ship gravity anomalies to account for the atmospheric effect before comparison with the satellite gravity (Rapp 1979). The deviation between the satellite gravity and ship gravity anomalies resulting from the use of different ellipsoidal systems can be characterized as Bg. = ay +a, sin? & (23) based on the formula for normal gravity (Heiskanen & Moritz 1985). As an example, consider a ship cruising along a meridian with a constant speed V, and d= d)+Ad, where o is the starting latitude. Using the relationships sin’ 6 = (1 — cos 2¢)/2 and Ad = V2/R, with t being time, and the Maclaurin series for the cosine function up to the562 C. Hwang and B. Parsons 100 - gravity anomaly (mgals) gravity anomaly (mgals) 50 | ——__ ° 1 -= >> raw ship gravity sateliite-only gravity adjusted ship gravity combined gravity, raw ship gravity satelite-only gravity adjusted ship gravity combined gravi 2 3 elapsed time (days) Figure 10. Ship gravity before and after adjustment compared with (b) 2112. second order, we can transform (23) into a quadratic polynomial in time: Bg, = byt byt + bot er) The error in ship gravity due to drift of the gravimeter will have a similar form to (24). Other sources such as correct tie-ins to base stations and off-levelling will probably contribute to a DC shift (for the latter we assume a constant ship speed and a constant heading). Thus we expect that most of the net difference between satellite gravity and ship gravity can be accounted for over moderate periods of time by the following expression Ber=dyt dtd, (25) w) satellite-only and combined gravity along-track for cruises (a) v2302 and where d, will be termed the bias. The following procedure was then used to adjust the ship gravity. We first derived a satellite-only gravity field on a 2'X2' grid using the altimeter-derived gradients alone. For each cruise a quadratic in time was determined that best fitted the difference between the satellite-only gravity and the ship gravity, and this was subtracted from the ship gravity. Table 3 lists the estimated coefficients of the quadratic for each cruise, Because d, and d, represent the total effect of the different error sources, and are the result of a least-squares fit, for some cruises these terms can be very large as compared to the DC shifts and drift rates given in Table Al of Wessel & Watts (1988). For cruises with fewer than 100 data points falling withinTable 3. Results of adjustment of ship gravity to satellite-only gravity using quadratic polynomials, Cruise Year Day fl h weight akkT5 7 “40 5 00913 1965 241 -10.67 251 0.35 2112 1978 209 -15.49 0.90 0.20 c2115 1978 291 -29.93 5.18 1.04 cd052 1990 238-142 0.46 0.01 ch433 1964-217, 8813.48 0.34 ch6ll 1966 197 19.00 -0.64 0.05 d084a 1977 172-313 -0.26 0.01 d084b 1977 189-188 -0.57 (0.01 d09ia 1978 66 = 181 (045 (0.00 do93a 1978-150 -1.72-0.57-0.03, d093b 1978 169 0.83 «0.27 «0.01 di3la 1982 229 -15.55 0.02 0.02 di3ib 1982 253-293-891 -3.01 di3ic 1982 255 5.60 -0.97 -0.25 dut02 1970 223-1239 -0.24 0.03 2181 1981 269 8:10 -3.01 0.20 2281 1981 291-540 260 -0.15 g9008 1990 278 232 080 0.12 jchOl 1969 218 -1298 0.47 0.03 kea37 1970 289 -14.13 0.00 0.22 kea38 1971 149 -11.73 O11 0.00 kea39 1971 174 -11.73 0.05 0.00 kead0 1971 206-1180 -1L.79 4.92 NARANSCCISSS owMM IIH woo Kkt75 1975 248 13.11 0.16 0.01 5 sh676 1976 306 -681 216 -0.76 7 88013 1965 223-739 0.88 «0.41 > ss014 1965 247 043° 0.37 5 st0lb 1979 276 0.69 -1.02 8 v2302 1966 227 211 0.08 5 ¥2303 1966 239 0.43 -0.04 3 v2305 1966 289 3330.13, 5 v2702 1969 179 -0.16 0.01 5 v2703 1969-200 1.35 153 5 v2706 1969 268 0.07 -0.09 5 v2707 1969 294 249 0.33 5 v2801 1970 187 -0.78 0.00 5 v2804 1970 266 32 134 5 v2805 1970 285 -0.19 0.09 5 v2909 1972 205 0.04 -0.01 5 v2910 1972 224 3.89 10.55 5 v2911 1972 259 0.15 -0.05 5 v3008 1973 149 0.04 0.02 5 v3009 1973178 -0.18 -0.01 6 y3012_1973 282 0.10 0.00 5 Note. The year and day correspond to the date ealeulated from the same initial time as used in the polynomial of eq. (25). The coefficients d, dy and d; are measured in mgal, mgal day" and, meal day, respectively. the area studied, the adjustment sometimes yielded unrealistically large coefficients, and it was decided that these cruises should be excluded from further use. It was. noted that recent cruises such as ed052 and g9008 show offsets that are small compared to the average offset of 10.40 mgal from all cruises. The negative DC shifts shown in Table 3 suggest that the gravity data collected from the cruises in the 1960s and the 1970s are consistently larger than the satellite gravity and, in particular, the DC shifts seem to agree with the 14 mgal offset of the Potsdam Datum Gravity anomalies from altimeter data 56% 40 30 frequency (%) a L 40 30 20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 difference (mgal) (a) 40 _ 20 20 10 of [ 40 90 20 10 0 10 20 30 40 difference (mgal) (b) 40 20 ° 40 20 20 10 0 10 20 30 40 difference (mgal) (c) Figure 11. Histograms of differences between the satellite-only gravity and the ship gravity (a) before adjustment of the ship gravity and (b) after adjustment, Also shown (c) is the histogram of the differences between the combined gravity and the adjusted ship gravity.564 C. Hwang and B. Parsons (Dehlinger 1978, p. 35). Fig. 11 shows histograms of the differences between ship and satellite-only gravity before and after the adjustment. Fig. 11 indicates that the differences before the adjustment are biased towards negative values and then are normalized by the adjustment. ‘The overall statistics give a mean and standard deviation of the differences between the satellite-only gravity and the ship gravity before the adjustment of —4.01 and 10.68 mgal, which were reduced to 0.123 and 7.10mgal after the adjustment. These figures should be compared with the rms power of 34.15 mgal for the adjusted ship gravity. The Statistics of the comparisons between the adjusted ship gravity from individual cruises and the satellite-only gravity will depend on the sampling interval. If the ship gravity was sampled at an interval not significantly smaller than the grid of the satellite-only gravity and the short-wavelength gravity variations along the ship-track are relatively weak, then the difference is small. For instance, the comparison along cruise kea38 shows an rms difference of 3.08 mgal. If, on the other hand, the sampling interval of the ship gravity is much smaller than the grid and the short-wavelength gravity signal is strong, then the difference will be large. For instance, the ‘comparison along cruise g9008 shows an rms difference of 8.70 mgal We also made other satellite-only solutions using various combinations of satellites. The comparisons between the satellite-only gravity and the adjusted ship gravity are summarized in Table 4, Also shown in Table 4 is a comparison made for the global gravity field by Sandwell & Smith (1992), which was derived from the Seasat, Geosat and ERS-1 gradient data using a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) method (third row in Table 4). The average DC shift of the ship data relative to their gravity is 10.89 mgal. From ‘Table 4 it is clear that the solution without T/P data is close to that derived from using all four satellites and has better accuracy than that of Sandwell & Smith. This comparison also shows that the LSC method yields better results than the FFT method over the area studied. It is noted that the comparison made by Neumann et al. (1993) over the central South Atlantic shows that, when the dense Geosat/GM data is included in the calculation, Sandwell & Smith’s satellite gravity yields a standard deviation of 7 mgal with respect to the ship gravity. Furthermore, the contribution of the dense ERS-1 data is clearly demonstrated by the numbers in rows 2 and 5 of Table 4, where we sec that the increase in the discrepancy due to the lack of ERS-1 data is about 30 per cent, Table 4. Differences (in mgal) between satellite-only gravity and adjusted ship gravity Satellites and Mean Std. dev. method 1,2,3,4, ke oz 7.10 12,3. oa 1247 1,2,3, bse ous 7.62 1,2, 4, Ise 010 922 Satellite identification: 1 3= ERS-1, 4= TP. Ise: least-squares collocation; ft: fast Fourier transform, Seasat, 2 = Geosal, GRAVITY ANOMALIES FROM ALTIMETER GRADIENTS AND ADJUSTED SHIP GRAVITY BY LSC Using the adjusted ship gravity and altimetric gradients together we have produced a combined gravity field on a 2'2' grid. A colour image of the gravity field is shown in Fig. 12, which was generated using the GMT program GRDIMAGE (Wessel & Smith 1991). The combined gravity was compared with the adjusted ship gravity, yielding a mean difference and standard deviation of 0.02 and 2.65 mgal, respectively. Along-track comparisons for legs ©2112 and v2302 are shown in Fig. 10. The combined gravity is almost coincident with the adjusted ship gravity in this figure. Fig. 11 shows the histogram of differences between the combined gravity and the adjusted ship gravity. These differences are narrowly centred at zero. This is not unexpected as we have incorporated the adjusted ship gravity in the solution. Thus the LSC has actually ‘reproduced’ the ship gravity, despite the large standard deviation, 9.02 mgal, assigned to the ship gravity on the two cruises, which is significantly larger than the average noise level of the gradient data, A possible explanation is that, ‘once the systematic errors are removed, the ship gravity has an intrinsic noise level much smaller than that given in Table 2, as suggested by the spectral analysis described in a previous section. ‘The LSC method also gives accuracy estimates for the predicted values (see eq. 2). The average and rms values of the accuracy estimates for the satellite-only gravity are 5.92 and 7.16 mgal respectively, compared to the average noise level of 2.35 rad (equivalent to 2.30 mgal in gravity) for the altimeter gradients. Thus the satellite-only gravity has noise greater than the data used. This is explained by the fact that we are predicting gravity anomalies through covariance functions using gradients that can be calculated at large distances from the points of prediction. The combined gravity yields accuracy estimates better than those from satellite-only gravity, with average and rms values of 5.76 and 6.99 mgal respectively. The average accuracy of the combined gravity is still poorer than the average noise of the gradient data, but better than the average noise of the ship gravity. We conclude that, given a new set of ship gravity measurements, the difference from the combined gravity ficld would be of the order of about 2 to 3mgal where the locations of the ship gravity measurements are close to locations of existing data points—either altimetric gradients or ship gravity. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS There are a number of features of considerable interest that can be seen in the gravity field shown in Fig. 12. The gravity anomalies around the Reykjanes Ridge and Iceland are predominantly positive. This is due in part to the long-wavelength component of the Earth’s gravity field, which may have an origin deep in the mantle, but also to the gravity anomalies associated with shallow bathymetry around Iceland (Sclater, Lawver & Parsons 1975: Cochran & Talwani 1978), This relationship between depth and gravity anomalies, and the extensive melting on Iceland, indicates that there is a hot, convective upwelling located beneath-35-28-21-14 -7 0 7 14 21 28 35 42 49 56 63 mgal Figure 12. Colour image of the combined gravity field. ‘The image is shaded relief, with illumination and viewpoint of an observer in south-eastIceland, providing the dominant influence on the tectonics of the area. At mid-ocean ridges with slow spreading rates, like that observed for the Reykjanes Ridge, the axial topography is normally characterized by a valley: in contrast. at fast spreading rates a small axial high is observed (Macdonald 1982). Studies of gravity anomalies at mid-ocean ridges (Small & Sandwell 1989; Owens & Parsons 1994) show that gravity reflects the axial valley or high at the different spreading rates, and hence can be used as a proxy for the topography. Fig. 12 shows that, on the Reykjanes Ridge close to Iceland, an axial high can be seen despite the slow spreading rate. Moving farther south along the ridge, a transition between the axial high and an axial valley can be clearly seen at about 59°N. A recent model used to explain axial topography is the one developed by Chen & Morgan 1990): at slow-spreading ridges cooling close to the axis penetrates into the mantle immediately beneath the crust, producing a strong, high-viscosity layer there. It is the deformation of this layer that results in the axial topography (Lin & Parmentier 1989: Chen & Morgan 1990). At sufficiently high spreading-rates, the cooling at the ridge axis, does not reach the base of the crust or the mantle beneath, and the absence of a strong mantle layer, together with a hotter, low-viscosity lower crust, removes the stresses that cause the axial valley. The near-axis temperature structure can be influenced by factors other than the spreading-rate, for example changes in the mantle temperature at depth, and changes in the crustal thickness (Phipps Morgan & Chen 1993), It is expected that both of these latter parameters will vary with distance from Iceland along the ridge. Hence, the location of the transition between axial high and axial valley on the Reykjanes Ridge. and the way the amplitudes of valley or high vary with distance trom Iceland, provides constraints on the variations in mantle temperature and crustal thickness. ‘The latitude of the transition between axial valley and axial high also seems to mark a division between features. seen off-ridge. North of the transition, a series of gravity highs and lows can be seen fanning out on either side of the Reykjanes Ridge. The overall effect is of a V or series of Vs straddling the Reykjanes Ridge: these features in the gravity field must correspond to the V-shaped ridges described by ‘Vogt (1971). These V-shaped ridges cut across isochrons and can be explained in terms of regions of increased melt-production periodically migrating down the ridge at velocities of the order of 10-20cm yr”. It is generally accepted that the cause of the excess melting in Iceland is the higher temperatures associated with a convective upwelling beneath Iceland (e.g. White & McKenzie 1989), Numerical studies of convection, used to interpret the intermediate-wavelength depth and gravity anomalies associated with hotspots and mid-plate swells, often show instabilities in the convective flow, especially in the presence of a near-surface low-viscosity layer (Robinson & Parsons 1988). These instabilities produce disturbances in the temperature structure of the convection, which could produce changes in the amount of crust generated if entrained at the mid-ocean ridge. The amount of melting is very sensitive to temperature (McKenzie & Bickle 1988), and only a small temperature change would be required to generate sufficient additional crust to explain the V-shaped Gravity anomalies from altimeter data 565 ridges. The velocities expected in the convective circulation associated with a mantle plume are of the order of 10-30cm yr‘ (Watson & McKenzie 1991), similar to the rates at which the source of the V-shaped ridges must migrate down the Reykjanes ridge. If the origin of the V-shaped ridges is related to time dependence in the temperature structure of a convective upwelling centred on Iceland, then the spacing of the ridges, and their along-strike continuity seen in the gravity field, provides observations constraining that time dependence. South of the transition between axial high and axial valley, the off-ridge gravity anomalies are more coherent and of greater amplitude than those to the north. A possible explanation is that, if an axial valley has existed at these latitudes for some time, the off-axis features reflect segmentation of the ridge. like the segmentation observed elsewhere in the North Atlantic (e.g. Sempere, Purdy & Schouten 1990: Lin et al. 1990). A complete discussion and interpretation of the features revealed in the combined gravity field for the Reykjanes Ridge will be presented elsewhere, but the wealth of coherent short-wavelength detail apparent in Fig. 12 underlines the value of using all available gravity information. The general signature of the gravity field around the Reykjanes Ridge is largely due to the satellite altimetry, as the colour image of the satellite-only field (not shown here) and that of the combined field (Fig. 12) appear to be quite similar overall. However, much of the detailed structure has come from the ship data. For instance, the transition from axial high to medium valley, occuring at about 59°N and 328", is better defined in the combined field than in the satellite-only field, Also seen in the combined field are several segments on the ridge axis, which are less pronounced in the satellite-only field. The combined gravity thus features a regionally uniform medium resolution from altimetry and locally high resolution from ship gravity In the study described in this paper we have discussed techniques for combining altimeter measurements from different satellites and ship gravity to calculate a gravity field using least-squares collocation. Because least-squares collocation can make use of any type of geopotential data, it provides a natural way of combining geoid gradients from satellites with different inclinations, something that requires less straightforward, iterative methods when using Fourier transform techniques. One might argue that, once dense altimeter data with global coverage from the ERS-1 168-day repeat mission becomes available, there will be less need to make use of ship gravity. However, increasing numbers of detailed marine gravity surveys exist, particularly, for example, in relation to investigations of the mid-ocean ridge system. The resolution of these detailed ship surveys remains better than that which can be obtained even with dense altimeter coverage, at least until multiple cycles of the dense altimeter ground tracks are available, allowing averaging and consequent noise reduction. The method described above, of referencing ship gravity to a satellite-only gravity field, should provide a basis for removing systematic differences between satellite-derived gravity and ship gravity surveys, and for producing combined gravity fields with the best-possible resolution. Readers interested in the gravity field please send e-mail to hwang@geodesy.cy.nctu.edu.tw.566 C. Hwang and B. Parsons ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We made extensive use of the GMT software of Wessel & Smith (1991) in displaying altimeter and ship data. Discussions with Tony Watts and Jenny Collier on the ship gravity were very useful. 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