Excitation of Annual Polar Wobble by Global Oceans

A reasonable and quantitative result on the variation of polar wobble excited by the oceans is not available at present. Numerous researches have shown that atmospheric motion is the greatest excitation source for the seasonal variations in the polar wobble and that oceanic motion is one of the main remaining excitation sources. The excitation of variation in the annual polar wobble caused by oceans from 1992 to 2004 both globally and in latitude dependence, have been studied in depth by means of the new generation of SODA oceanic data assimilation (SODA-1.4.2 and SODA-1.4.3) and the ECCO oceanic data assimilation. The result shows that the variation in the seasonal polar wobble excited by the SODA oceans is very close to that of the residual after the action of the atmosphere and land water is deducted from the geodesic excitation function for a large part of the investigated time interval, and that there is overall agreement between the two as regards the annual amplitude and phase. In addition, in comparison with the result of early SODA-Bata 7, the new generation of SODA oceanic excitation has achieved obvious improvements. The latitude distributions of the excitations of the annual polar wobble by the SODA and ECCO oceans are consistent in the Greenwich direction, while having obvious differences in the direction of 90° E.