Adaptation of the torus and Rosborough approach to radial base functions

The most common approach for the processing of data of gravity field satellite missions is the so-called time-wise approach. In this approach satellite data are considered as a time series and processed by a standard least-squares approach. This approach has a very strong flexibility but it is computationally very demanding. To improve the computational efficiency and numerical stability, the so-called torus and Rosborough approaches have been developed. So far, these approaches have been applied only for global gravity field determinations, based on spherical harmonics as basis functions. For regional applications basis functions with a local support are superior to spherical harmonics, because they provide the same approximation quality with much less parameters. So far, torus and Rosborough approach have been developed for spherical harmonics only. Therefore, the paper aims at the development and testing of the torus and Rosborough approach for regional gravity field improvements, based on radial basis functions as basis functions. The developed regional Rosborough approach is tested against a changing gravity field produced by simulated ice-mass changes over Greenland. With only 350 parameters a recovery of the simulated mass changes with a relative accuracy of 5% is possible.