No More Leap Second?

WerewulfX writes "CNN reports: "In a phenomenon that has scientists puzzled, the Earth is right on schedule for a fifth straight year." Update yeah, this is a repost. Whatever- it's a holiday. Nothing else to post :)

Comments

As noone got it right in the earlier article

[fw3]

In addition to the fact that tides and the moon influence earth's rotation, so does weather.

Particularly, the monsoon season I believe has the largest effect, particularly because the generated winds impact the himalayan mountains.

The combination of a large (albeit distributed) force impacting a large object (himalayas) affects the angular velocity of the earth.

I learned this first because a friend was writing an ephermeris program and got in contact with the guy an NIST who tracks these things. I beleive they can make some predictions of change in rotational velocity based on the force of observed storms.

Also the Navy has built an array of (radio or laser, I forget) interferrometers located in (I believe) the rocky mountains which are used to measure the actual variances against star positions.