Temporal

Gravity
Variations

The body of the earth and its gravity

field are subject to temporal variations
of secular, periodic, and abrupt nature,
which can occur globally, regionally,
and locally. These variations also
influence the orientation of the earth.
Modern geodetic measurement and
evaluation techniques are used to
detect these variations to a high level of
accuracy. If time-independent results
are required, geodetic observations
must be corrected for temporal
variations. By determining temporal

Temporal
Gravity
Gravity Variation
changes with time may be
divided into effects due to:
A. A time dependent Gravitational
Constant and variations of the
Earth's Rotation.
B. Tidal accelerations and Tidal
Potential
C. Variations caused by terrestrial
mass displacements. (Non-Tidal)

 Newton's
law of universal gravitation states

that an attractive force F is set up between

any two point masses, varying proportional
with the product of the masses (and ) and
inversely proportional with the distance l
between the masses:
The gravitational constant is the proportionality
constant used in Newtons Law of Universal
Gravitation, and is commonly denoted by G.
G =6.6738410-11N m2kg-2

 The earth's rotational vector is

subject to secular, periodic, and
irregular variations, leading to changes
of the centrifugal acceleration z. In a
spherical approximation, the radial
component of z enters into gravity. By
multiplying
with
( = geocentric latitude), we obtain:
Differentiation yields the effect of
changes in latitude (polar motion) and
angular velocity (length of day) on
gravity:

 Tidal acceleration is caused by the superposition of

lunisolar gravitation (and to a far lesser extent
planetary gravitation) and orbital accelerations due to
the motion of the earth around the barycenter of the
respective two-body system (earth-moon, earth-sun
etc.).
For a rigid earth, the tidal acceleration at a given point
can be determined from Newton's law of gravitation
and the ephemerides (coordinates) of the celestial
bodies (moon, sun, planets). The computations are
carried out separately for the individual two-body
systems (earth-moon, earth-sun etc.), and the results
are subsequently added, with the celestial bodies
regarded as point masses.

 Geometry of the Earth-Moon system

The configuration of the Earth-Moon system used for
deriving the properties of the tidal equilibrium is displayed in
Figure 1. It follows from the figure that r + q = R

Figure 1: Illustration of the Earth-Moon system with the Earth to the

left and the Moon to the right (figure greatly out of scale). O, P and
L are the centre of the Earth, an arbitrary point on Earths surface
and the centers of the Moon, respectively. r is the Earth's radius
vector (from point O to P), R is the position vector from the centre
of the Earth to Moon's centre (from O to L), and q is the position
vector from an arbitrary point P on Earth's surface to L. The line

 Centre of mass of the Earth-Moon system

The center of mass of the Earth-Moon system
is located along the center line OP at a distance
xR (0 < x < 1) from point O (Fig. 1). We then get
that
or

Here and are the mass of Moon and Earth,

respectively, see Table 1. With mean values of r
and R (Table 2), we get that
x

implying that the center of mass of the EarthMoon system is located about one quarter of

ble 1. Mass of Earth, Moon and Su

Mass of:
Earth

Symbol

Value
kg

Moon
Sun

Table 2. The mean distance

between Earth and
Moon, and
Earth and Sun Symbol
Value
Earth-Moon

Earth-Sun

 Gravitational

forces and
accelerations in the Earth and
Moon system
The gravitational force at the Earth's
center because of the presence of the
Moon,, is

where R/R is the unit vector along the center

line from Earth to Moon.

According to Newton's second law, this

force leads to an acceleration at the
center of Earth

Similarly, the gravitational

acceleration at point P caused by the
Moon is
At point P, there is also a
gravitational acceleration g towards the
center of the Earth caused by Earth's
mass:

By inserting the numerical values of

G(6.6738410-11N m2kg-2 )and MT(5.974x1024kg) r(one
obtains expected. Furthermore, the equation
above gives the relationship

 Tidal Acceleration
We consider the geocentric coordinate
system to be moving in space with the earth
but not rotating with it (revolution without
rotation). All points on the earth experience the
same orbital acceleration in the geocentric
coordinate system (see Fig. 2 for the earthmoon system). In order to obtain equilibrium,
orbital acceleration and gravitation of the
celestial bodies have to cancel in the earth's
center of gravity. Tidal acceleration occurs at all
other points of the earth. The acceleration is
defined as the difference between the
gravitation b, which depends on the position of
the point, and the constant part , referring to

The tidal acceleration deforms the earth's

gravity field symmetrically with respect to
three orthogonal axes with origin at the earth's
center. This tidal acceleration field experiences
diurnal and semidiurnal variations, which are
due to the rotation of the earth about its axis.

Fig. 2 Lunar gravitation, orbital acceleration,

 If we apply the law of gravitation

to (), we obtain for the moon (m)

Here, mass of the moon, and and =

distance to the moon as reckoned from
the calculation point P and the earth's
center of gravity respectively. We have
= 0 for = . Corresponding relations hold
for the earth-sun and earth-planet
systems.

 Tidal Potential
Tides are a measure of changes in
gravity, caused by the attraction of the
moon and sun. Tidal potential is the
gravitational potential that varies with the
position of the Moon and Sun relative to
the Earth
o Components of the tidal potential
Deformation of the solid earth due to
gravitational potential (solid earth tide)
Movement of ocean water due to
changing potential (ocean tides)
Deformation of the solid earth due to

 Laplace's tidal equations

When tidal forcing is introduced to the
(quasi)linearized version of the shallow water
equations, the obtained equations are known
as Laplace's tidal equations (LTE). Tidal flow is
then described as the flow of a barotropic
fluid, forced by the tidal pull from the Moon
and the Sun. The phrase shallow water
equations" reacts that the wavelength of the
resulting motion is large compared to the
thickness of the fluid. The horizontal
components of the momentum equation and
the continuity equation can then be expressed
as:

(a)
(b)
(c)
In the above equations,t is the (prescribed)
tidal forcing and is the resulting surface
elevation,
h is themomentum
ocean depth.
The horizontal
equations are
linear, but inclusion of a friction term will
typically turn the equations non-linear. Likewise,
the divergence terms in the continuity equation
are nonlinear because of the product uh and vh.
Solution of LTE requires discretization and

 The terrestrial gravity field is

affected by a number of
variations with time due to
mass redistributions in the
atmosphere, the hydrosphere,
and the solid earth. These
processes take place at
different time scales and are

 Long-term global effects include

postglacial rebound, melting of the ice
caps and glaciers, as well as sea level
changes induced by atmospheric
warming; slow motions of the earth's
core and mantle convection also
contribute. Subsidence in sedimentary
basins and tectonic uplift are examples
of regional effects. Groundwater
variations are primarily of seasonal
character, while volcanic and earthquake
activities are short-term processes of
more local extent.

 The
magnitude of the resulting gravity
variations depends on the amount of mass
shifts and is related to them by the law of
gravitation. Research and modeling of these
variations is still in the beginning stages.
Large-scale variations have been found from
satellite-derived gravity field models, but
small-scale effects can be detected only by
terrestrial gravity measurements. Simple
models have been developed for the relation
between atmospheric and hydrological mass
shifts and gravity changes, Generally, gravity
changes produced by mass redistributions do
not exceed the order of to g.