GRACE and GRACE-FO data integration and modelling for geoscience applications

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It is remarkable that still little is known about our planet, its oceans, atmosphere, and arctic regions, as well as their long-term changes that have a profound effect on climate and the environment we leave in. Whereas these changes were monitored in the past with terrestrial means and methods, today's technology allows us to continue the monitoring from space quickly, efficiently and at a much lower cost. However, in order to capture the fine details of our planet, the monitoring satellites must orbit at low altitudes, typically between 250-1000 km. This means that the satellites are continuously in the thermosphere, the upper layer of the Earth's atmosphere where many intense and even extreme processes occur, such as high temperature variations, solar radiation, magnetic storms and solar winds among many others that can all be described as Space Weather'. Extreme variations in space weather and corresponding magnetic storms affect our satellites and most importantly, in our case, disturb the satellite measurements in an unusual way. In order to extract useful information from the satellite measurements, the disturbances must be well understood and eventually eliminated, a task that is very challenging and in many cases impossible. Our research focuses on a particular group of satellites, namely, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE follow-on, whose purpose is to track changes of the Earth's water mass, for instance in large lakes, rivers, underground water, soil moisture, ice sheets, and glaciers or changes in the solid Earth, such as tectonics, large landslides and large earthquakes and atmospheric changes that directly reflect the changes in our environment and climate in particular. The aim of the research is to study how space weather contaminates the measurements taken by this group of satellites known as gravimetric satellites and to develop mathematical and statistical methods by which we can significantly reduce or eliminate the space weather influences from the measurements and extract useful information about our planet and its variable environment.