An Interpretation of the Non-Tidal Secular Variation in the Earth Rotation: the Interaction Between the Solar Wind and the Earth's Magnetosphere

Abstract

The long period variation of the earth rotation is generally explained by the tidal friction. The tidal friction, however, is not the only source to influence the earth rotation in long term. In this paper, by means of the interaction between the solar wind and the magnetosphere of the earth, the additional magnetic pressure will exist in the magnetic tail due to the crowding and sparseness of the magnetic lines in the consideration of the earth rotation, which could be considered as a source of effecting the long term variation of the earth rotation. It is shown in this paper that this mechanism can produce angular deceleration of the Earth rotation in the magnitude of ω = −1.7 × 10-22 s-2. This result might be a prompt to search for other sources in the secular variation of the rate of the Earth rotation variation further in order to regulate the observed result with the theoretical one.