NASA Releases 3D Earth Geoid Built From 1 Billion Observations, Tracking 15 Years of Gravity Shifts
Updated
Updated · WIRED · Jul 29
NASA Releases 3D Earth Geoid Built From 1 Billion Observations, Tracking 15 Years of Gravity Shifts
3 articles · Updated · WIRED · Jul 29
Summary
NASA published an interactive 3D geoid model that exaggerates Earth’s gravity-driven bulges and depressions by 10,000 times to make subtle field variations visible.
1 billion satellite observations collected over 15 years underpin the model, which represents the ocean surface Earth would have if shaped only by gravity and rotation.
GRACE measurements behind the visualization have also quantified climate impacts, showing Antarctica lost about 135 gigatons of ice a year from 2002 to 2025 and Greenland 264 gigatons annually.
The same gravity data tracks groundwater depletion and drought, including record-low soil moisture and shallow groundwater in parts of Spain and France during this summer’s fire-fueling dry spell.
Those observations help refine sea-level-rise estimates and give water managers a broader tool for monitoring worsening drought as the climate warms.