Excitation of the Earth's Polar Motion due to Mass Variations in Major Hydrological Reservoirs
- 10 November 1988
- journal article
- Published by American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Journal of Geophysical Research
- Vol. 93 (B11) , 13811-13819
- https://doi.org/10.1029/jb093ib11p13811
Abstract
Previous studies on the hydrological excitation of the Earth's polar motion have neglected the effect of water mass variations of hydrological reservoirs that have time scales much longer than a month. To remedy this, the present paper calculates the polar motion excitation caused by variations in major natural lakes, the impoundment in artificial reservoirs, and the depletion of a major groundwater aquifer. It is found that (1) the annual water mass variation in natural lakes contributes a significant fraction in the total hydrological excitation of the annual wobble, (2) the hydrological reservoirs have been negligible in the Chandler wobble excitation, and (3) the contribution of hydrological reservoirs to the total secular polar drift has been negligible in this century due to fortuitous cancellation among reservoirs.Keywords
This publication has 21 references indexed in Scilit:
- Global surface-water-induced seasonal variations in the Earth's rotation and gravitational fieldGeophysical Journal International, 1988
- Effect of a uniform sea-level change on the Earth's rotation and gravitational fieldGeophysical Journal International, 1988
- Changes in the Earth's rotation and low-degree gravitational field induced by earthquakesGeophysical Journal International, 1987
- Climate Fluctuations and Record-High Levels of Lake MichiganBulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1987
- Snow load effect on the Earth's rotation and gravitational field, 1979–1985Journal of Geophysical Research, 1987
- Excitation of the Earth's rotational axis by recent glacial dischargesGeophysical Research Letters, 1986
- High Accuracy Earth Rotation and Atmospheric Angular MomemtumPublished by Springer Nature ,1986
- Autoregressive harmonic analysis of the Earth's polar motion using homogeneous international latitude service dataJournal of Geophysical Research, 1983
- Atmospheric angular momentum fluctuations, length-of-day changes and polar motionProceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences, 1983
- The Sea that Spills into a DesertScientific American, 1963