Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society (Jan 2000)
A preliminary nonlinear analysis of the earth's chandler wobble
Abstract
The Chandler wobble (CW) is a resonant response of the Earth rotational pole wandering around its figure axis whose excitation mechanism is still uncertain. It appears as polar motion oscillations with an average period of about 433 days and a slowly varying amplitude in the range (0–300) milliarcsec (mas). We here perform a nonlinear analysis of the CW via a time-delay coordinate embedding of its measured X and Y components and show that the CW can be interpreted as a low dimensional unstable deterministic process.