Coherence between geophysical excitations and celestial pole offsets

Celestial pole offsets are the displacements between the observed position of the Earth's spin axis in space and its position predicted by the adopted models of precession and nutation. At present, the models are IAU2006 and IAU 2000, respectively. The celestial pole offsets are regularly measured by Very Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), the observations being coordinated and published by the International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry (IVS). These offsets contain a mixture of several effects: the unpredictable free term, Free Core Nutation (FCN) that is due to the presence of the outer fluid core of the Earth, forced motions excited by the motions in the atmosphere and oceans, and also imperfections of the adopted precession-nutation models. The geophysical excitations are also available, as determined by several atmospheric and oceanographic services. The aim of this paper is to compare the time series of these integrated excitations with the observed celestial pole offsets and estimate the level of coherence between them. KEYWORDS: Geophysical excitations, celestial pole offsets, coherence