Excitation of Annual Polar Motion by the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans

Abstract

The global oceans play important roles in exciting the annual polar motion besides the atmosphere. However, it is still unclear about how large the regional oceans contribute to the annual polar motion. We investigate systemically the contributions of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans to the excitation of the annual polar motion, based on the output data of ocean current velocity field and ocean bottom pressure field from Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) ocean circulation model over the period 1993-2005. The result shows that due to its particular location and shape, the Atlantic Ocean makes a less significant contribution to the x-component of the annual polar motion excitation than the Pacific and Indian Oceans, while all these three oceans contribute to the y-component of the annual polar motion excitation to some extent.