IGPP Global Earth Vertical Gravity Gradient

Marine geophysicists and in particular researchers of plate tectonics have an interest in derivatives of the Earth’s gravity field as such anomalies may highlight smaller-scale features, such as seafloor tectonic scars and seamounts. David Sandwell and colleagues have provided altimetry-based marine vertical gravity gradients (VGG) and similar grids since 1995 and the latest versions are now available for remote use in GMT. Over land, these grids are filled in by predictions of the EGM2008 model [Pavlis et al., 2008]. Polar regions beyond ±80˚ are not covered and are set to NaN.

Usage - Global Earth Vertical Gravity Gradient Grid

You access a global vertical gravity gradient (vgg) grid by specifying the special name

@earth_vgg_[rru[_reg]]

The following codes for rru and the optional reg are supported (dimensions are listed for pixel-registered grids; gridline-registered grids increment dimensions by one):

Code	Dimensions	Reg	Size	Description
01d	360 x 180	g,p	91 KB	1 arc degree global VGG (1 min @ 111 km)
30m	720 x 360	g,p	329 KB	30 arc minute global VGG (1 min @ 55 km)
20m	1080 x 540	g,p	731 KB	20 arc minute global VGG (1 min @ 37 km)
15m	1440 x 720	g,p	1.3 MB	15 arc minute global VGG (1 min @ 28 km)
10m	2160 x 1080	g,p	2.8 MB	10 arc minute global VGG (1 min @ 18 km)
06m	3600 x 1800	g,p	7.6 MB	6 arc minute global VGG (1 min @ 10 km)
05m	4320 x 2160	g,p	11 MB	5 arc minute global VGG (1 min @ 9 km)
04m	5400 x 2700	g,p	17 MB	4 arc minute global VGG (1 min @ 7.5 km)
03m	7200 x 3600	g,p	29 MB	3 arc minute global VGG (1 min @ 5.6 km)
02m	10800 x 5400	g,p	63 MB	2 arc minute global VGG (1 min @ 3.7 km)
01m	21600 x 10800	p	236 MB	1 arc minute global VGG (1 min original)

See GMT remote dataset usage for when resolution codes are optional or required. All of these data will, when downloaded, be placed in your ~/.gmt/server directory, with the earth_vgg files being placed in an earth/earth_vgg sub-directory. If you do not specify a CPT, the default CPT for this data set will be used (@earth_vgg.cpt)

Technical Information - Global Earth Vertical Gravity Gradient Grid

We scale and reformat the original data to take up very little space so that downloads from the servers are as fast as possible. For the VGG grid this means we chose 1/32 = 0.03125 Eotvos as the smallest data unit, which is well below the uncertainties in the model. Data are scaled and shifted to fit in a short integer grid that is highly compressed by netCDF lossless compression and chunking. The data are reported in Eotvos.

Data References - Global Earth Vertical Gravity Gradient Grid

1. Sandwell, D.T., Harper, H., Tozer, B. and Smith, W.H., 2019: [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2019.09.011].

2. Pavlis, N.K., Holmes, S.A., Kenyon, S.C. and Factor, J.K., 2012: [https://doi.org/10.1029/2011JB008916].