Intercomparisons of the global DTMs ETOPO5, TerrainBase and JGP95E

Digital terrain models are the basis for geodetic, geophysical, oceanograph ic and other studies in regional or global scale. In gravity field modellin g the global DTMs ETOPO5, TerrainBase and JGP95E have been used among other in combination with other data related to the gravity field, for the devel opment of geopotential models. An intercomparison of these DTMs showed cons iderable differences between them. The standard deviation of these differen ces are of the order of 100m, while the minimum and the maximum differences range from -3.8km to 4.7km were observed. This statistics shows that the m odels are affected by considerable errors, The refinement of the DTMs will contribute to the improvement of the gravity field approximation. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.