Comparative Study of the Spherical Downward Continuation

• DOI: 10.1007/s10712-014-9312-0
• Publication Date: 2015-01-20T09:55:11Z
• Authors: Josef Sebera; Martin Pitoňák; Eliška Hamáčková; Pavel Novák
• Keywords: 01 natural sciences; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Downward continuation of the potential data (gravity or magnetic) helps to interpret contributing sources by transforming the physical signal to their neighborhood. This paper applies three continuation approaches (Landweber’s iteration, the direct method and the inverse-matrix approach with Tikhonov’s regularization), based on the Poisson integral equation, and four integration schemes to the second vertical derivative of the anomalous potential $$T_{\rm zz}$$ obtained from GOCE data. In the experiments, $$T_{\rm zz}$$ was downward continued for 250 km in the area of Central Europe with special attention to edge effects. For the integration schemes, which use prior information outside the region of interest to reduce edge effects, the best agreement with TIM-r4 was achieved by the inverse-matrix approach with Tikhonov’s regularization (RMS = 1.15 eotvos). On the contrary, without prior information the iterative approach performed with RMS = 1.17 eotvos.