{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,10]],"date-time":"2026-01-10T19:48:47Z","timestamp":1768074527612,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":44,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"16","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,7]],"date-time":"2021-08-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1628294400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000104","name":"National Aeronautics and Space Administration","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["NNX16AF14G"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["NNX16AF14G"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000104","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000104","name":"National Aeronautics and Space Administration","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["80NSSC20K1595"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["80NSSC20K1595"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000104","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Commonly used mass-concentration (mascon) solutions estimated from Level-1B Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow-On data, provided by processing centers such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) or the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), do not give users control over the placement of mascons or inversion assumptions, such as regularization. While a few studies have focused on regional or global mascon optimization from spherical harmonics data, a global optimization based on the geometry of geophysical signal as a standardized product with user-defined points has not been addressed. Finding the optimal configuration with enough coverage to account for far-field leakage is not a trivial task and is often approached in an ad-hoc manner, if at all. Here, we present an automated approach to defining non-uniform, global mascon solutions that focus on a region of interest specified by the user, while maintaining few global degrees of freedom to minimize noise and leakage. We showcase our approach in High Mountain Asia (HMA) and Alaska, and compare the results with global uniform mascon solutions from range-rate data. We show that the custom mascon solutions can lead to improved regional trends due to a more careful sampling of geophysically distinct regions. In addition, the custom mascon solutions exhibit different seasonal variation compared to the regularized solutions. Our open-source pipeline will allow the community to quickly and efficiently develop optimized global mascon solutions for an arbitrary point or polygon anywhere on the surface of the Earth.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/rs13163134","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,8]],"date-time":"2021-08-08T21:35:40Z","timestamp":1628458540000},"page":"3134","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Automated Dynamic Mascon Generation for GRACE and GRACE-FO Harmonic Processing"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"13","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4292-2367","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yara","family":"Mohajerani","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA"},{"name":"eScience Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3840-3860","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"David","family":"Shean","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0429-6905","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Anthony","family":"Arendt","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"eScience Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA"},{"name":"Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6964-1194","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tyler C.","family":"Sutterley","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105, USA"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"358","DOI":"10.1038\/s41558-019-0456-2","article-title":"Contributions of GRACE to understanding climate change","volume":"9","author":"Tapley","year":"2019","journal-title":"Nat. Clim. Chang."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"e2020GL088306","DOI":"10.1029\/2020GL088306","article-title":"Extending the global mass change data record: GRACE Follow-On instrument and science data performance","volume":"47","author":"Landerer","year":"2020","journal-title":"Geophys. Res. Lett."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Tapley, B.D., Bettadpur, S., Watkins, M., and Reigber, C. (2004). The gravity recovery and climate experiment: Mission overview and early results. Geophys. Res. Lett., 31.","DOI":"10.1029\/2004GL019920"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"30205","DOI":"10.1029\/98JB02844","article-title":"Time variability of the Earth\u2019s gravity field: Hydrological and oceanic effects and their possible detection using GRACE","volume":"103","author":"Wahr","year":"1998","journal-title":"J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"19934","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.1206785109","article-title":"Mapping Greenland\u2019s mass loss in space and time","volume":"109","author":"Harig","year":"2012","journal-title":"Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA"},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wahr, J., Swenson, S., and Velicogna, I. (2006). Accuracy of GRACE mass estimates. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33.","DOI":"10.1029\/2005GL025305"},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2193","DOI":"10.1029\/2001JB000576","article-title":"Methods for inferring regional surface-mass anomalies from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) measurements of time-variable gravity","volume":"107","author":"Swenson","year":"2002","journal-title":"J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"680","DOI":"10.1126\/science.161.3842.680","article-title":"Mascons: Lunar mass concentrations","volume":"161","author":"Muller","year":"1968","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"B01403","DOI":"10.1029\/2009JB006546","article-title":"Global mass flux solutions from GRACE: A comparison of parameter estimation strategies\u2014Mass concentrations versus Stokes coefficients","volume":"115","author":"Rowlands","year":"2010","journal-title":"J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Tiwari, V., Wahr, J., and Swenson, S. (2009). Dwindling groundwater resources in northern India, from satellite gravity observations. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36.","DOI":"10.1029\/2009GL039401"},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2648","DOI":"10.1002\/2014JB011547","article-title":"Improved methods for observing Earth\u2019s time variable mass distribution with GRACE using spherical cap mascons","volume":"120","author":"Watkins","year":"2015","journal-title":"J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"7547","DOI":"10.1002\/2016JB013007","article-title":"High-resolution CSR GRACE RL05 mascons","volume":"121","author":"Save","year":"2016","journal-title":"J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"613","DOI":"10.3189\/2013JoG12J147","article-title":"Antarctica, Greenland and Gulf of Alaska land-ice evolution from an iterated GRACE global mascon solution","volume":"59","author":"Luthcke","year":"2013","journal-title":"J. Glaciol."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1381","DOI":"10.1007\/s00190-019-01252-y","article-title":"Regularization and error characterization of GRACE mascons","volume":"93","author":"Loomis","year":"2019","journal-title":"J. Geod."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"8130","DOI":"10.1002\/2014GL061052","article-title":"Regional acceleration in ice mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica using GRACE time-variable gravity data","volume":"41","author":"Velicogna","year":"2014","journal-title":"Geophys. Res. Lett."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"337","DOI":"10.1007\/s00190-011-0522-7","article-title":"Estimating geoid height change in North America: Past, present and future","volume":"86","author":"Jacob","year":"2012","journal-title":"J. Geod."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"7010","DOI":"10.1029\/2018GL078173","article-title":"Mass Loss of Totten and Moscow University Glaciers, East Antarctica, Using Regionally Optimized GRACE Mascons","volume":"45","author":"Mohajerani","year":"2018","journal-title":"Geophys. Res. Lett."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mohajerani, Y., Velicogna, I., and Rignot, E. (2019). Evaluation of Regional Climate Models using Regionally-Optimized GRACE Mascons in the Amery and Getz ice shelves basins, Antarctica. Geophys. Res. Lett.","DOI":"10.1029\/2019GL084665"},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"e2020GL087291","DOI":"10.1029\/2020GL087291","article-title":"Continuity of Ice Sheet Mass Loss in Greenland and Antarctica From the GRACE and GRACE Follow-On Missions","volume":"47","author":"Velicogna","year":"2020","journal-title":"Geophys. Res. Lett."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"514","DOI":"10.1038\/nature10847","article-title":"Recent contributions of glaciers and ice caps to sea level rise","volume":"482","author":"Jacob","year":"2012","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"014004","DOI":"10.1088\/1748-9326\/9\/1\/014004","article-title":"Evaluating Greenland glacial isostatic adjustment corrections using GRACE, altimetry and surface mass balance data","volume":"9","author":"Sutterley","year":"2014","journal-title":"Environ. Res. Lett."},{"key":"ref_22","unstructured":"Forsberg, R., and Reeh, N. (September, January 28). Mass change of the Greenland ice sheet from GRACE. Proceedings of the 1st Meeting of the International Gravity Field Service: Gravity Field of the Earth, Istanbul, Turkey."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"607","DOI":"10.1007\/s00190-011-0463-1","article-title":"Assessing Greenland ice mass loss by means of point-mass modeling: A viable methodology","volume":"85","author":"Baur","year":"2011","journal-title":"J. Geod."},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"299","DOI":"10.1007\/s00190-017-1063-5","article-title":"Statistically optimal estimation of Greenland Ice Sheet mass variations from GRACE monthly solutions using an improved mascon approach","volume":"92","author":"Ran","year":"2018","journal-title":"J. Geod."},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2133","DOI":"10.1093\/gji\/ggy242","article-title":"Optimal mascon geometry in estimating mass anomalies within Greenland from GRACE","volume":"214","author":"Ran","year":"2018","journal-title":"Geophys. J. Int."},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ferreira, V.G., Yong, B., Seitz, K., Heck, B., and Grombein, T. (2020). Introducing an Improved GRACE Global Point-Mass Solution\u2014A Case Study in Antarctica. Remote Sens., 12.","DOI":"10.3390\/rs12193197"},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Croteau, M.J., Sabaka, T.J., and Loomis, B.D. (2021). GRACE fast mascons from spherical harmonics and a regularization design trade study. J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth.","DOI":"10.1029\/2021JB022113"},{"key":"ref_28","unstructured":"Mohajerani, Y. (2021, July 28). Yaramohajerani\/Dynamic_mascons: Release for Accepted Manuscript (v2.0). Available online: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5281\/zenodo.5167967."},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"637","DOI":"10.1137\/S0036144599352836","article-title":"Centroidal Voronoi tessellations: Applications and algorithms","volume":"41","author":"Du","year":"1999","journal-title":"SIAM Rev."},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ju, L., Ringler, T., and Gunzburger, M. (2011). Voronoi tessellations and their application to climate and global modeling. Numerical Techniques for Global Atmospheric Models, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-11640-7_10"},{"key":"ref_31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"183","DOI":"10.1016\/S0925-7721(02)00077-9","article-title":"Voronoi diagrams on the sphere","volume":"23","author":"Na","year":"2002","journal-title":"Comput. Geom."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"6910","DOI":"10.1029\/2019GL082929","article-title":"Improved Earth oblateness rate reveals increased ice sheet losses and mass-driven sea level rise","volume":"46","author":"Loomis","year":"2019","journal-title":"Geophys. Res. Lett."},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"e2019GL085488","DOI":"10.1029\/2019GL085488","article-title":"Replacing GRACE\/GRACE-FO C3,0 With Satellite Laser Ranging: Impacts on Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Change","volume":"47","author":"Loomis","year":"2020","journal-title":"Geophys. Res. Lett."},{"key":"ref_34","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Swenson, S., Chambers, D., and Wahr, J. (2008). Estimating geocenter variations from a combination of GRACE and ocean model output. J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth, 113.","DOI":"10.1029\/2007JB005338"},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"8352","DOI":"10.1002\/2016JB013073","article-title":"Optimizing estimates of annual variations and trends in geocenter motion and J2 from a combination of GRACE data and geophysical models","volume":"121","author":"Sun","year":"2016","journal-title":"J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth"},{"key":"ref_36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2019","DOI":"10.1002\/2016JB013844","article-title":"Comment on \u201cAn assessment of the ICE-6G_C (VM5a) glacial isostatic adjustment model\u201d by Purcell et al","volume":"123","author":"Argus","year":"2018","journal-title":"J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth"},{"key":"ref_37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"363","DOI":"10.3389\/feart.2019.00363","article-title":"A systematic, regional assessment of high mountain Asia glacier mass balance","volume":"7","author":"Shean","year":"2020","journal-title":"Front. Earth Sci."},{"key":"ref_38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"494","DOI":"10.1017\/jog.2019.32","article-title":"Karakoram geodetic glacier mass balances between 2008 and 2016: Persistence of the anomaly and influence of a large rock avalanche on Siachen Glacier","volume":"65","author":"Berthier","year":"2019","journal-title":"J. Glaciol."},{"key":"ref_39","unstructured":"RGI Consortium (2017). Randolph Glacier Inventory\u2014A Dataset of Global Glacier Outlines: Version 6.0: Technical Report, Global Land Ice Measurements from Space, Colorado, USA. Digit. Media, 10."},{"key":"ref_40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3055","DOI":"10.1002\/grl.50527","article-title":"Time-variable gravity observations of ice sheet mass balance: Precision and limitations of the GRACE satellite data","volume":"40","author":"Velicogna","year":"2013","journal-title":"Geophys. Res. Lett."},{"key":"ref_41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"e2019GL086926","DOI":"10.1029\/2020GL087291","article-title":"Continuity of the mass loss of the world\u2019s glaciers and ice caps from the GRACE and GRACE Follow-On missions","volume":"47","author":"Velicogna","year":"2020","journal-title":"Geophys. Res. Lett."},{"key":"ref_42","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"235","DOI":"10.3389\/feart.2019.00235","article-title":"Water storage trends in high mountain Asia","volume":"7","author":"Loomis","year":"2019","journal-title":"Front. Earth Sci."},{"key":"ref_43","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2504","DOI":"10.1002\/2013JB010860","article-title":"Evaluation of glacier changes in high-mountain Asia based on 10 year GRACE RL05 models","volume":"119","author":"Yi","year":"2014","journal-title":"J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth"},{"key":"ref_44","unstructured":"Sutterley, T. (2021, July 28). Tsutterley\/read-GRACE-harmonics: 1.0.2.0 (v1.0.2.0). Zenodo. Available online: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5281\/zenodo.5156865."}],"container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2072-4292\/13\/16\/3134\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T06:42:15Z","timestamp":1760164935000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2072-4292\/13\/16\/3134"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,7]]},"references-count":44,"journal-issue":{"issue":"16","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,8]]}},"alternative-id":["rs13163134"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/rs13163134","relation":{},"ISSN":["2072-4292"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2072-4292","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,7]]}}}