Earth’s deformation due to the dynamical perturbations of the fluid outer core

Abstract

The elasto-gravitational deformation response of the Earth’s solid parts to the perturbations of the pressure and gravity on the core-mantle boundary (CMB) and the solid inner core boundary (ICB), due to the dynamical behaviors of the fluid outer core (FOC), is discussed. The internal load Love numbers, which are formulized in a general form in this study, are employed to describe the Earth’s deformation. The preliminary reference Earth model (PREM) is used as an example to calculate the internal load Love numbers on the Earth’s surface, CMB and ICB, respectively. The characteristics of the Earth’s deformation variation with the depth and the perturbation periods on the boundaries of the FOC are also investigated. The numerical results indicate that the internal load Love numbers decrease quickly with the increasing degree of the spherical harmonics of the displacement and depend strongly on the perturbation frequencies, especially on the high frequencies. The results, obtained in this work, can be used to construct the boundary conditions for the core dynamics of the long-period oscillations of the Earth’s fluid outer core.