Glacier Melting Effect on the Earth’s Rotation - Revisited

The direction of polar wander has recently been tilted eastward by several degrees. By direct calculation of Earth’s inertia tensor perturbation due to observed glacier mass changes (twenty year average), we found the yearly drift polar motion excitation as (ψ₁, ψ₂)=(1.00, 0.05) milliarcsec. This direction closely matches the observed pole drift, and we infer that glacier melting is the primary driver of the observed polar wander. Analysis of polar motion data indicates that a substantial portion of the observed eastward pole drift has occurred since the late 1990s, also consistent with the accelerated rate of glacier melting. The associated change in LOD due to average glacier melting for the last twenty years is estimated as +114 microsec, which implies total 0.42 s delay in UT1 for the same time span.