The Global S[Formula: see text] Tide in Earth's Nutation.

Diurnal S[Formula: see text] tidal oscillations in the coupled atmosphere-ocean system induce small perturbations of Earth's prograde annual nutation, but matching geophysical model estimates of this Sun-synchronous rotation signal with the observed effect in geodetic Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) data has thus far been elusive. The present study assesses the problem from a geophysical model perspective, using four modern-day atmospheric assimilation systems and a consistently forced barotropic ocean model that dissipates its energy excess in the global abyssal ocean through a parameterized tidal conversion scheme. The use of contemporary meteorological data does, however, not guarantee accurate nutation estimates per se; two of the probed datasets produce atmosphere-ocean-driven S[Formula: see text] terms that deviate by more than 30 [Formula: see text]as (microarcseconds) from the VLBI-observed harmonic of [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text]as.