Studying the Impact of the NGGM and MAGIC missions

Within this research project, future satellite gravity missions GRACE-C, NGGM, and MAGIC will be examined to assess their capacity to support various applications in hydrology, glaciology, oceanography, climate sciences, solid earth sciences, and geodesy. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment-Continuity (GRACE-C) is the pair developed by NASA/DLR, will be the first to be launched and placed in a near-polar orbit at an altitude of about 500 km like the previous mission configurations GRACE and GRACE Follow-On. The ESA’s Next Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM) consists of satellite twins in an inclined orbit. Finally, the Mass change And Geosciences International Constellation (MAGIC) is referred to as a combination of GRACE-C and NGMM.
The contribution of the Geodesy Group is this SING project is around addressing the potential added value of NGGM and MAGIC missions to hydrological Data Assimilation (DA) applications. Particularly, we will assess to what extent one can benefit higher spatial and temporal resolution, as well as lower uncertainty and more homogenised noise structure of the NGGM and MAGIC missions (compared to the GRACE-type missions) in the global hydrological DA studies.