Modeling topographical density for geoid determinationThis article is one of a series of papers published in this Special Issue on the theme GEODESY.
In geoid computation, effects of real three-dimensional topographic masses on the Earth’s gravity field must be accurately quantified and, in the Stokes–Helmert scheme, replaced with effects of those masses condensed on the geoid. The most comprehensive modern schemes for evaluation of topographical effects account for terrain effects, use a spherical model of topography, and incorporate two-dimensionally varying models of topographical mass density. In this contribution, we employ a three-dimensionally varying model of topographical density. We use Newton’s integration to determine the direct topographical effect (DTE) on gravity and primary indirect topographical effect (PITE) on gravity potential. Lastly, we apply Stokes’ integration to calculate the DTE, PITE, and secondary indirect topographical effect (SITE) on geoidal height. We focus here on validation of our results and demonstration of our software’s capabilities. We present results for the simple geometrical shape of a disc under various rotati...