The changing gravitational force a pendulum, a person, or a detector is able to register is related to the changing locations of everything around us. This means that when a plane flies overhead, at the smallest level, your weight is reduced as you are pulled toward that plane. You won’t notice this; your bathroom scale can’t measure this, but the change in the gravitational field is real. 

From 2009 to 2013, the ESA’s GOCE mission carefully measured the Earth’s gravitational field, and in a new analysis of the data, researchers have been able to measure the Earth’s crust and upper mantle. By better understanding these parts of the Earth, we can gain new insights into how the Earth’s plates move and initiate reactions like earthquakes. Using this data along with seismological observations and data on the properties of the crust, scientists have created a new model that is already helping us understand how the Earth continues to rebound from melted glaciers and the spreading rates of mid-ocean ridges. This work is published by J Dullea, S Lebedev, and NL Celli in Geophysical Journal International, and I look forward to seeing how this new model improves our understanding of our changing Earth.

More Information

ESA press release

“WINTERC-G: mapping the upper mantle thermochemical heterogeneity from coupled geophysical-petrological inversion of seismic waveforms, heat flow, surface elevation and gravity satellite data,” J Fullea et al., 2021 March 10, Geophysical Journal International