ON THE ROTATIONAL ANGULAR-MOMENTUM OF THE OCEANS AND THE CORRESPONDING POLAR MOTION

Periodic polar motions caused by ocean tides are predicted. In the Lio uville equations for rotational motion the complete excitation functio ns for the ocean tides have to be used. This does not depend on the fa ct that hydrodynamical ocean tide models do not consider the centrifug al acceleration. The observable polar motion of the Celestial Ephemeri s Pole CEP (more exactly: the terrestrial location of the CEP) is tabu lated for the ten ocean tides M2, S2, N2, K1, O1, P1, Mf, Mf', Mm, Ssa . Typical amplitudes for the largest ocean tides are 0.4 milliarcsecon ds. This is within the reach of geodetic VLBI and SLR observations.