Observation of the Earth System from Space

A special highlight is the - termination of seasonal gravity variations caused by changes in continental water masses. For GOCE, to be launched in 2006, new gravity field analysis methods are under development and integrated into the ESA processing s- tem. 200,000 GPS radio occultation pro?les, observed by CHAMP, have been processed on an operational basis. They represent new and excellent inf- mation on atmospheric refractivity, temperature and water vapor. These new developments require geodetic space techniques (such as VLBI, SLR, LLR, GPS) to be combined and synchronized as if being one global instrument.