Data Processing Strategies for Marine Gravity Using Gravity Anomalies and Gravity Disturbances: A Case Study in the Southern Baltic Sea Region

Abstract. Regional coverage of marine areas by data from marine gravity measurements is important in geodesy and geophysics. However, interpretation of recorded gravity data is still a challenge. This paper addresses the problem of interpreting gravity data using two related, but slightly different methods. The first method involves gravity anomalies, while the second employs gravity disturbances. The main objective of this paper, apart from publishing in some detail the theory behind the two methods, is to demonstrate and briefly discuss the differences in the results. The cause of these different results are mainly interpretation errors in extracting, from marine gravimeter readings, the corrected readings caused by the gravity signal. We show that when both methods are applied to the same data set, which is available at https://doi.org/10.34808/30k6-fj34 (Pyrchla Krzysztof et al., 2025), a model of the marine geoid along the survey lines can be obtained. This can be used either as a direct estimate of the geoid or as an additional constraint by which we can detect and correct the interpretation errors.