On the regime of the Earth’s polar motion based on data for the period 1962–2007

Abstract

The view of the Earth’s polar motion as a completely deterministic process has been called into question in the past decades, because no long-term prediction can be made. At the same time, no fundamental restrictions currently exist in the problem of a long-term prediction of the Earth’s rotation. Determining the boundaries of predictability is related to identifying the regime of the Earth’s polar motion. IERS data for the period 1962–2007 have been used to study the regime of the Earth’s polar motion. Analysis of the plots of polhodes reveals peculiarities in the variations of the pole’s coordinates X and Y in certain intervals along the time axis. The data in the interval from 2003 to 2006 have been analyzed in greatest detail: a model for the Chandler and annual oscillations has been constructed and relations between the parameters of these oscillations have been determined; the shift of the instantaneous pole on the phase plane and the Poincare plane has been investigated. As a result, we have found features inherent in chaotic motion (intermittency) and calculated the period (32 years) of the possible repetitions of such anomalies, as confirmed by our analysis of the plots of polhodes. The intervals where the peculiarities in the motion of the Earth’s instantaneous pole manifest themselves are compared with the intervals of the inflections on the plots of variations in the length of the day (LOD).