Improvements in height datum transfer expected from the GOCE mission

One of the aims of the Earth Explorer Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation (GOCE) mission is to provide global and regional models of the Earth's gravity field and of the geoid with high spatial resolution and acc uracy. Using the GOCE error model. simulation studies were performed in ord er to estimate the accuracy of datum transfer in different areas of the Ear th. The results showed that with the GOCE error model. the standard deviati on of the height anomaly differences is about one order of magnitude better than the corresponding value with the EGM96 error model. As an example, th e accuracy of the vertical datum transfer from the tide gauge of Amsterdam to New York was estimated equal to 57 cm when the EGM96 error model was use d. while in the case of GOCE error model this accuracy was increased to 6 c m. The geoid undulation difference between the two places is about 76.5 m. Scaling the GOCE errors to the local gravity variance. the estimated accura cy varied between 3 and 7 cm, depending on the scaling model.