| UNIVERSAL TIME UT1 - LENGTH OF DAY LOD |
Coordinates of the pole |
Celestial pole offsets |
UT1-TAI since 1962 |
Predicted UT1-TAI |
Values of LOD / TT - UT1 since 2000 BC |
UT1 is related to the Greenwich
mean sidereal time (GMST) by a conventional relationship (Aoki et al.,
1982) ; it gives access to the direction of the IERS Reference Meridian
in the ICRS , reckoned around the CEP axis. It is expressed as the difference
UT1-TAI or UT1- UTC.
TAI is the atomic time scale of BIPM ; its unit interval is exactly one
SI second at sea level. The origin of TAI is such that UT1-TAI ~ 0 on 1958
January 1, but the beginning of the TAI measurements goes back july 1955.
The instability of TAI is about 6 orders of magnitude smaller than that
of UT1. The Terrestrial Time TT is presently defined as TT=TAI + 32.184s.
Quarterly values of UT1-TAI since
1962 and predicted
ones are given.
The difference between
the astronomically determined duration of the day and 86400 SI seconds is also
called excess of length of day (LOD). The relationship of the angular
velocity of the Earth ω with LOD is
ω =ΩN (1- LOD/T)
where ΩN= 72 921 151.467064 10-12radians/s is the NOMINAL
rotation rate (corresponding to the mean rotation rate of the epoch 1820) and
T the associated duration of the mean solar day that is to say T =86400
Universal time and length
of day are subject to variations due to the zonal tides (smaller than 2.5 ms
in absolute value), to oceanic tides (smaller than 0.03 ms in absolute value),
to atmospheric circulation, to internal effects and to transfer of angular momentum
to the Moon orbital motion.
The variations in LOD can be split into several components, according to their causes.
The total variation is shown in the upper part of the figure, without oscillations
induced by the tides of the solid Earth and oceans, are shown separately for
the long and short periods. The dynamical influence of the liquid core of the
Earth and climatic variations in the atmosphere account for slow variations
(trend in the upper part of the figure). The rest of the atmospheric excitation
can be split into a seasonal oscillation and residual oscillation, which includes
50-day oscillations as well as large anomalies like the one associated with
the 1983 El Niño event. Historical
values of LOD since 2000 BC, determined from ancient eclipses records, are available here.
Models for the tidal
variations of UT1 are available in the IERS Conventions, Chap. 8.
Figure: decomposition of the LOD
Reference: Aoki,S., Guinot, B., Kaplan, G.H., Kinoshita, H., McCarthy,
D.D., Seidelmann, P.K. 1982: Astron. Astrophys. 105, 1.