Analysis of Geophysical Variations of the C20 Coefficient of the Geopotential

  • L.I Fernández
Part of the International Association of Geodesy Symposia book series (IAG SYMPOSIA, volume 133)

Abstract

The temporal variations of the C20 spherical harmonic coefficient of the geopotential are estimated from the length of day (LOD) and compared with the C20 variations due to geophysical contributions. In particular, we analyzed the agreement of the hydrological C20 changes as estimated by the Land Dynamics Model (LaD) model. The computation spans between January 1980 and May 2004 for the hydrological model

The contribution of atmospheric mass redistributions, along with the oceanic mass terms and solid Earth tides were removed from the geodetic C20 time series for computing residuals. Afterward the hydrological influence was investigated

After eliminating seasonal variations, the hydrological excitation seems to be not adequate to explain the inter-annual variations found in the C20 residuals

The luni-solar precession and nutation of the Earth depend on the dynamical flattening (H); which is related to the principal moments of inertia of the whole planet. H is linked to the C20 coefficient of the Earth’s potential, which is regularly determined by space geodetic techniques

In this work, we also estimate the seasonal variations on H due to geophysical causes. These results should be useful to investigate the geophysical considerations in the computation of the IAU 2000 precesion-nutation model

Keywords

Length-of-day Hydrology Geopotencial Gravity Earth rotation 

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009

Authors and Affiliations

  • L.I Fernández
    • 1
  1. 1.Facultad de Cs. Astronómicas y Geofisicas de la UniversidadBuenos Aires Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET)Argentina

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