The understanding of length-of-day variations from satellite gravity and laser ranging measurements

Abstract

The change in the rate of the Earth's rotation, length-of-day (LOD), is principally the result of movement and redistribution of mass in the Earth's atmosphere, oceans and hydrosphere. Numerous studies on the LOD excitations have been made from climatological/hydrological assimilation systems and models of the general circulation of the ocean. However, quantitative assessment and understanding of the contributions to the LOD remain unclear due mainly to the lack of direct global observations. In this paper, the total Earth's surface fluids mass excitations to the LOD at seasonal and intraseasonal timescales are investigated from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Estimating Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) model, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re-analysis (ERA)-Interim, GRACE-derived surface fluids mass and the spherical harmonics coefficient C20 from the satellite laser ranging (SLR) as well as combined GRACE+SLR solutions, respectively. Results show that the GRACE and the combined GRACE and SLR solutions better explain the geodetic residual LOD excitations at annual and semi-annual timescales. For less than 1 yr timescales, GRACE-derived mass is worse to explain the geodetic residuals, whereas SLR agrees better with the geodetic residuals. However, the combined GRACE and SLR results are much improved in explaining the geodetic residual excitations at intraseasonal scales. © 2011 The Authors Geophysical Journal International © 2011 RAS.