Analysis and prediction of polar motion using MSSA method

• Main Authors: Xin Jin, Xin Liu, Jinyun Guo, Yi Shen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2021-07-01
• Series: Earth, Planets and Space
• Subjects: Polar motion; Multi-channel singular spectrum analysis; Time series analysis and prediction; Autoregressive moving average
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40623-021-01477-2

Abstract Polar motion is the movement of the Earth's rotational axis relative to its crust, reflecting the influence of the material exchange and mass redistribution of each layer of the Earth on the Earth's rotation axis. To better analyze the temporally varying characteristics of polar motion, multi-channel singular spectrum analysis (MSSA) was used to analyze the EOP 14 C04 series released by the International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service (IERS) from 1962 to 2020, and the amplitude of the Chandler wobbles were found to fluctuate between 20 and 200 mas and decrease significantly over the last 20 years. The amplitude of annual oscillation fluctuated between 60 and 120 mas, and the long-term trend was 3.72 mas/year, moving towards N56.79 °W. To improve prediction of polar motion, the MSSA method combining linear model and autoregressive moving average model was used to predict polar motion with ahead 1 year, repeatedly. Comparing to predictions of IERS Bulletin A, the results show that the proposed method can effectively predict polar motion, and the improvement rates of polar motion prediction for 365 days into the future were approximately 50% on average.