Oceanic and soil moisture contributions to seasonal polar motion

Abstract Oceanic contributions to the annual and semi-annual wobble of polar motion have been evaluated by Wunsch (Wunsch, J., 2000. Oceanic influence on the annual polar motion. J. Geodynamics 30, 389–399) using three different ocean circulation models: (a) the Parallel Ocean Climate Model (Semtner, A.J., Chervin, R.M., 1992. Ocean circulation from a global eddy-resolving model. J. Geophys. Res. 97, C4, 5493–5550; (b) the model used by Ponte et al. (Ponte, R.M., Stammer, D., Marshall, J., 1998. Oceanic signals in observed motions of the Earth's pole of rotation. Nature 391, 476–479); (c) the Hamburg Ocean Model for Circulation and Tides used by Thomas and Sundermann [Thomas, M., Sundermann, J., 1998. Zur simultanen Modellierung von allgemeiner Zirkulation und Gezeiten im Ozean und Auswirkungen auf bestimmte Erdrotations parameter. In: Freeden, W. (Ed.), Progress in Geodetic Science. Aachen, pp. 144–151]. That result is extended by considering oceanic refinements as well as time variable soil moisture and snow load. Five soil moisture models were used. The snow load according to Chao et al. (Chao, B.F., O'Connor , W.P., Chang, A.T.C., Hall, D.K.,Foster, J.L., 1987. Snow-load effect on the Earth's rotation andgravitational field 1979-1985. J. Geophys. Res. 92, 9415–9422) was added to this in an attempt to close the balance. The NCEP/NCAR reanalysis atmosphere+Ponte et al. (1998) ocean+Chao and O'Connor (Chao, B. F., O'Connor , W. P., 1988. Global surface-water-inducedseasonal variations in the Earth's rotation and gravitationalfield. Geophys. J. 94, 263–270) (rain+snow) nearly close the annual balance of polar motion excitation, i.e. it is very close to the geodetic excitation functioncomputed from the time series of the IERS (International Earth Rotation Service). The other models of soil moisture differ in theirpolar motion contribution from the Chao and O'Connor (1988) estimates. Further improvements in this work await results from the space gravity missions CHAMP, GRACE and GOCE.