The Secular Drift of the Rotation Pole

Abstract

The reality of the decadal fluctuations in the position of the Earth’s rotation pole with respect to the Earth’s crust as exhibited in solutions for the pole path determined using the ILS latitude observations has been questioned in the past due to concerns about the contaminating influence of systematic effects at the individual ILS stations. A new solution for the pole path is recovered in this study by a technique designed to account for any systematic effects that might be occurring at individual stations. This new solution is shown to be significantly coherent with the well-known ILS solution indicating that systematic latitude effects at the individual ILS stations are not significantly corrupting the solution for the pole path. It is therefore concluded that the decadal fluctuations in the pole path are real.