Practical – 01: Spherical Harmonics Synthesis and its Use in Solid Earth

 The level-2 GOCE products are generally given as gravitational potential in terms of spherical harmonic coefficients (see Lecture 03). In this practical, gravitational functional (e.g., geoid heights) should be computed from these products as gridded data on the Earth's surface.

After you compute the results for geoid heights and gravity anomalies, you need to plot them and discuss the main differences and characteristics between both fields.

In case of extra time, you can try to compute the geoidal height and height anomaly at the scatter locations.

The overall procedure and equations are provided in the file below (Practical-01.pdf). The MATLAB/OCTAVE scripts and functions will be available to download during Week 6.