Diurnal and semi-diurnal effects of ocean tides on polar motion and UT1: An updated assessment

We revisit the computation of diurnal and semidiurnal effects of the ocean tide on Polar Motion (PM) and UT1 considering the principal waves of the Ocean Tidal Angular Momentum (OTAM) calculated from the FES 2014 ocean tide atlas. We take into account the recent development of polar motion theory, especially the frequency dependence of the transfer functions in (sub-)diurnal bands. The method of calculating the minor waves is also carefully studied and modified: instead of an interpolation based on neighboring waves, we propose a frequency dependent expression obtained by a linear fit to the admittances and phases of principal waves. Compared in time domain with polar motion (PM) and UT1 derived from Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations, our model performs as well as the recent Desai-Sibois model computed from TPXO8 tidal atlas. The impact of diurnal and semi-diurnal oscillations produced by the luni-solar tidal torque on the asymmetric mean mass distribution of the Earth are observed in the corresponding residuals, which is not the case for the older PM/UT1 model recommended in IERS Convention 2010. More generally, we conclude that tidal modelling of sub-daily terms and corresponding empirical developments are consistent to within 23 μas for PM and 3 μs for UT1. In parallel, the effects based on TPXO8 OTAM waves are recalculated according to our method, and present the best agreement with the observations. Our tables, calculated from FES 2014 or TPXO8 OTAM, can be truncated to the 48 or 50 terms with amplitudes above 1 μas for PM or 0.1 μs for UT1 to describe those Earth rotation Parameters in a way consistent with their current observation uncertainties.