On the Effect of Ocean Tides on the Secular Retardation of the Earth's Rotation

Abstract

The classical problem of determining the secular retardation of the Earth's rotation due to the effect of tides (oceanic and bodily) has an important geophysical value in determining the possible existence of processes inside the Earth, which lead to secular variations of rotation of the whole Earth or its external layers.

Using new cotidal charts of the world ocean calculated by Bogdanov for the main tidal waves M₂, S₂, K₁ and O₁ and using the method of moments of tidal forces the retarding moment was found to be 8.3 × 10²³ dyn cm. This is twice the amount of previous evaluations. (This method is superior to the method of calculating the dissipation of energy or the moments of frictional forces). This amount corresponds to a retardation of 3.8 μs/century in the speed of the Earth's rotation. But the observations of the Sun give only 1.9 μs/century for the retardation. Thus, there seem to be nontidal and probably internal processes, which accelerate the Earth's rotation by about 2 μs/century. And this is without taking account of additional smaller effects of bodily tides. The search for these processes is an important problem.

The full text of the paper will be published in the magazine Physics of the Earth, No. 2, 1972.