The Mediterranean Sea is a semi-enclosed true ocean. Recent Mediterranean circulation and sea level studies using various observations and ocean general circulation models show good coherence and agreement. The satellite altimetry and tide gauge observed and model predicted sea level show good coherent with correlation coefficient of 0.6. The barotropic pressure response accounts for about 66% of the Mediterranean sea level rise (1948-2001). The estimated sea level trend (1.54 ± 0.75 mm/yr) using decadal altimetry (1985-2001) after correcting the interannual/decadal signals reconstructed using tide gauge data, agrees well with the long term trend (1948-2001) estimated using tide gauges (1.43 ± 0.09 mm/yr) in the Mediterranean Sea, and is in better agreement than before with the global long-term sea level trend (1.7 - 1.8 mm/yr). Simulation studies indicate that the time-varying mass variations of Mediterranean Sea likely are sensitive to GOCE at the few mEötvös level. One of GOCE's primary high-level data products is the global gravity model with anticipated geoid accuracy of 1 cm RMS and a spatial resolution of 130 km or longer. Actually, the International Centre for Global Earth Models (ICGEM) distributes some GOCE's Global Gravity field Models (GGMs) like GO_CONS_GCF_2_DIR (Bruinsma et al, 2010), GO_CONS_GCF_2_TIM (Pail et al, 2010a), GO_CONS_GCF_2_SPW (Migliaccio et al, 2010), GOCO01S (Pail et al, 2010b). The work focuses on the comparison between these GOCE's GGMs, EGM2008 and EIGEN-51C, with sea gravity anomalies and geoid undulations provided by existing local and regional geoids - like IBERGEO (Sevilla, 2008), IGG (Corchete et al, 2005), etc. - in the Western Mediterranean Sea in order to find the GGM that best fits this area. We also try to estimate how the GOCE geoid data, provided by ESA, works on the Western Mediterranean Sea in order to prepare future geomatic issues.

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