Influence Of The Atmosphere On Earth Rotation: What New Can Be Learned From The Recent Atmospheric Angular Momentum Estimates?

The interaction between the atmosphere and the underlying solid mantle is oneof the most important sources of changes in all three components of theEarth's rotation vector on different time scales. In this paper the NCEP/NCARreanalysis time series of four times daily atmospheric effective angularmomentum (EAM) estimates is used to investigate some selected aspects of theatmospheric influence on Earth rotation. Emphasis is placed on thecontroversial features which were difficult or impossible to study using theoperational EAM data, such as excitation of the free oscillations in polarmotion, the Chandler wobble (CW) and the free core nutation (FCN), or theroles of diurnal and semidiurnal atmospheric tides and atmospheric normalmodes in the rotational dynamics of the Earth.