GRACE

Bits and Bites of Geodesy – Satellite Gravimetry: Studying Earth’s water cycle from space

Kiana Karimi February 27, 2026

Figure courtesy: Öykü Koç

During winter, mountains gain mass because of snow covering the peaks. In spring, the snow melts and flows downstream until it reaches the ocean or evaporates into the atmosphere to reach back on the surface as rain or snow. The global water cycle is very complex and essential for life on our planet. Did you know we can measure how the water is distributed by measuring its mass from space? How can ...[Read More]

Combining GRACE and Kalman filter to get superior evapotranspiration estimates

Ternikar Chirag Rajendra, Shubham Goswami and Bramha Dutt Vishwakarma October 25, 2024

(source: Getty/Oleh_Slobodeniuk)

Knowledge gaps in our understanding of the Hydrological Cycle The water cycle continuously provides us with fresh water. A critical process in the water cycle is evapotranspiration (ET), meaning that water evaporates from the surface and transpires from plants into the atmosphere. ET plays a crucial role in climate stability and the regulation of global water resources, but it is one of the most ...[Read More]

High resolution terrestrial water storage changes from combination of GRACE and models

Khosro Ghobadi-Far, edited by Öykü Koç and Bramha Dutt Vishwakarma February 7, 2024

Image credits: Jakob Keck (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission (2002-2017) consisted of two satellites at ~500 km altitude separated by 200 km, following each other in the same orbit. The distance between the two GRACE satellites changes because of the gravitational pull of the masses beneath the satellites. As such, mass changes at or near the Earth’s surface caused variations in the dista ...[Read More]