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The geoid, or mathematical mean sea surface, is defined not only on the seas, but also under land; it is the equilibrium water surface that would result, would sea water be allowed to move freely (e.g., through tunnels) under the land. Technically, an equipotential surface of the true geopotential, chosen to coincide (on average) with mean sea ...
GeographicLib provides a utility GeoidEval (with source code) to evaluate the geoid height for the EGM84, EGM96, and EGM2008 Earth gravity models. Here is an online version of GeoidEval. The Tracker Component Library from the United States Naval Research Laboratory is a free Matlab library with a
The ellipsoid is a mathematically defined regular surface with specific dimensions. The geoid, on the other hand, coincides with that surface to which the oceans would conform over the entire Earth if free to adjust to the combined effect of the Earth's mass attraction (gravitation) and the centrifugal force of the Earth's rotation.
There are several ways of defining geodesics (Hilbert & Cohn-Vossen 1952, pp. 220–221).A simple definition is as the shortest path between two points on a surface. However, it is frequently more useful to define them as paths with zero geodesic curvature—i.e., the analogue of straight lines on a curved su
The orthometric height (symbol H) is the vertical distance along the plumb line from a point of interest to a reference surface known as the geoid, the vertical datum that approximates mean sea level. [1] [2] Orthometric height is one of the scientific formalizations of a layman's "height above sea level", along with other types of heights in ...
The geoid undulation (also known as geoid height or geoid anomaly), N, is the height of the geoid relative to a given ellipsoid of reference. N = h − H {\displaystyle N=h-H} The undulation is not standardized, as different countries use different mean sea levels as reference, but most commonly refers to the EGM96 geoid.
The geometrical separation between it and the reference ellipsoid is called the geoidal undulation, or more usually the geoid-ellipsoid separation, N. It varies globally between ±110 m. A reference ellipsoid, customarily chosen to be the same size (volume) as the geoid, is described by its semi-major axis (equatorial radius) a and flattening f.
In geodesy, a reference ellipsoid is a mathematically defined surface that approximates the geoid, which is the truer, imperfect figure of the Earth, or other planetary body, as opposed to a perfect, smooth, and unaltered sphere, which factors in the undulations of the bodies' gravity due to variations in the composition and density of the ...