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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.
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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 ...
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 ...
A view of the Earth's geoid, as provided by EGM96. The Earth Gravitational Models (EGM) are a series of geopotential models of the Earth published by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). They are used as the geoid reference in the World Geodetic System.
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 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 geodesic completes one full oscillation in latitude before the longitude has increased by 360°. Thus, on each successive northward crossing of the equator (see Fig. 8), λ falls short of a full circuit of the equator by approximately 2 π f sinα 0 (for a prolate ellipsoid, this quantity is negative and λ completes more that a full ...