Abstract
Satellite-only global geopotential models (GGMs) derived from missions such as GRACE and GOCE, in spite of high-accuracy in long wavelength components of gravity field, do not possess the medium and short wavelength features. In this study, a numerical method for implementing the effect of near masses based on Digital Terrain Models (DTM) to increase the accuracy of aforementioned models is developed. The method is based on finite elements and can provide the effect of topographic masses on gravity field functionals with high accuracy. In contrast to common methods, our method is not based on Newton integral and in spite of its simplicity has high accuracy and can incorporate geometrical complexity of Earth's geometry such as curvature, in its formulation. The efficiency of the method is shown via increasing the accuracy of the geoid and gravity computed from satellite-only GGMs.