The Norwegian Height System NN1954 Revisited

Vertical reference systems based on national precise levelling networks have been realised in Europe since the 1860’s. The heights are related to gravity, which by convention may be measured values or amodel. The Norwegian Height System was adjusted in 1956 when the southern part of the country had been levelled once. Because of the lack of measured gravity, Clairaut’s formula for gravity was used in the orthometric correction. The intention was to establish an orthometric height system, but this was never tested or confirmed. In the literature the system is often referred to as orthometric, but some times as normal orthometric. This study shows that the Norwegian Height System was realised by a strongly deformed net due to lack of land uplift corrections. The derived heights are neither normal nor orthometric. When the land uplift is handled in a proper way, the heights are close to normal heights. The remaining small differences are shown to depend on the free air anomaly

Absolute gravity observations in Norway (1993–2014) for glacial isostatic adjustment studies: The influence of gravitational loading effects on secular gravity trends

AbstractWe have compiled and analyzed FG5 absolute gravity observations between 1993 and 2014 at 21 gravity sites in Norway, and explore to what extent these observations are applicable for glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) studies. Where available, raw gravity observations are consistently reprocessed. Furthermore, refined gravitational corrections due to ocean tide loading and non-tidal ocean loading, as well as atmospheric and global hydrological mass variations are computed. Secular gravity trends are computed using both standard and refined corrections and subsequently compared with modeled gravity rates based on a GIA model. We find that the refined gravitational corrections mainly improve rates where GIA, according to model results, is not the dominating signal. Consequently, these rates may still be considered unreliable for constraining GIA models, which we trace to continued lack of a correction for the effect of local hydrology, shortcomings in our refined modeling of gravitational effects, and scarcity of observations. Finally, a subset of standard and refined gravity rates mainly reflecting GIA is used to estimate ratios between gravity and height rates of change by ordinary and weighted linear regression. Relations based on both standard and refined gravity rates are within the uncertainty of a recent modeled result