Comparison between inelastic earth models constructed from astrometric and tidal gravity data

As was shown in [Molodensky, 2004a, 2004b], modern very long base interferometer (VLBI) data on the amplitudes and phases of the Earth’s forced nutation can provide significantly more rigid constraints on possible values of the quality factor of the lower mantle Q _μ and on the dynamic flattening of the liquid core e _lc as compared with seismic evidence and data on damping of the free oscillations of the Earth. On the other hand, the accuracy of modern tidal gravity data (obtained from twenty-year series of observations with a cryogenic gravimeter) is also very high and these data must be taken into account while estimating the parameters Q _μ and e _lc . The paper presents comparative estimates of the determination accuracy of the parameters Q _μ and the dynamic flattening of the liquid core from VLBI and the aforementioned tidal gravity data.