Interpolation and Statistical Analysis for Evaluation of Global Earth Gravity Models Based on GPS and Orthometric Heights in the Middle of Iraq

Abstract

The regions around the world need to perform their results based on the local geoid. However, each region has different ground topography based on the amount of gravity in this region. Nowadays, the recent global Earth's gravity model of 2008 is successfully used for different purposes in geosciences research. This research presents an overview of the preliminary evaluation results of the new Earth Gravitation Model (EGM08) in the middle of Iraq. For completeness, the evaluation tests were also performed for EGM96 by examining 31 stations distributed over four Iraqi provinces. The national orthometric heights were compared with the GPS /leveling data obtained from these stations. This study illustrated that the GPS /leveling based on EGM08 data was better than that based on EGM96 data in terms of reducing the root mean square error (RMSE) of the differences between the orthometric heights and GPS/leveling data.  The standard deviation (SD) values for the national orthometric heights and GPS heights were about 4 and 26cm, respectively. The results also show that there is a small difference in hight ranged (0.0013 - 0.1333 m) in Karbala, (0.0023 – 0.0062 m), in Najaf and  (0.0173 – 0.0703 m), in Babylon. Due to the flat area, better results were obtained in Karbala and Najaf than Babylon. The EGM08 geoid method has shown to yield very close results to reality for various projects, thus its accuracy is acceptable.