It is recognized widely nowadays that the superconducting gravimeter (SG) is a kind of best relative gravimeter with high observing precision, good continuity and stability. However, it is necessary to calibrate the direct output (change in voltage) by using scale value (calibration factor) before getting the change of the real gravity field. Studies show that the accuracy of the scale value will influence the late analysis and explanation of the observations. By using absolute gravity measurements of a FG5 absolute gravimeter (AG) at Wuhan international tidal gravity fundamental station (two campaigns each for 3 days) and by using known tidal parameters at the same station, the calibration factors of the SG and their precision are studied in detail in this paper.
Based on the international tidal gravity reference values at station Wuhan, the tidal gravity parameters, including the amplitude factors and phase differences are determined accurately by using the observations with three LaCoste-Romberg (LCR) gravimeters (G-589, ET-20 and ET-21) at stations Zhongshan and Changcheng in the Antarctic, respectively. The standard deviations of the determined amplitude factors of the main tidal waves are better than 0.5%. The amplitude of each tidal wave observed at station Zhongshan is much less than that of the same wave at station Changcheng. The differences of amplitude factors in the diurnal band (O1) at these two stations are less than 7% while those in the semi-diurnal band (M2) are larger than 40%. The influences of meteorology factors, such as atmospheric pressure and temperature, on the tidal gravity observations are very obvious. The oceanic loading effects on the tidal gravity are also very prominent. It is found that the amplitude of the final residual vector of every tidal wave reduces significantly after oceanic correction based on the Schwiderski(s global co-tides. However, because the local oceanic loading is not taken into account, the discrepancies of amplitude factors of wave O1 observed at Zhongshan from the corresponding values of theoretical tidal model are about 4%, and 9% at Changcheng.
