Understanding the effects of the core on the nutation of the Earth

Abstract

In this review paper, we examine the changes in the Earth orientation in space and focus on the nutation (shorter-term periodic variations), which is superimposed on precession (long-term trend on a timescale of years). We review the nutation modelling involving several coupling mechanisms at the core-mantle boundary using the Liouville angular momentum equations for a two-layered Earth with a liquid flattened core. The classical approach considers a Poincaré fluid for the core with an inertial pressure coupling mechanism at the core-mantle boundary. We examine possible additional coupling mechanisms to explain the observations. In particular, we examine how we can determine the flattening of the core as well as information on the magnetic field and the core flow from the nutation observations. The precision of the observations is shown to be high enough to increase our understanding on the coupling mechanisms at the core-mantle boundary.

Keywords

• Precession
• Nutation
• Core