Being a torque free motion of the rotating Earth, Chandler wobble is the major component in the Earth’s polar motion with amplitude about 0.05-0.2 arcsec and period about 430-435 days. Free core nutation, also called nearly diurnal free wobble, exists due to the elliptical core-mantle boundary in the Earth and takes almost the whole part of un-modelled variation of the Earth’s pole in the celestial sphere beside precession and nutation. We hereby present a brief summary of their theories and report their recent features acquired from updated datasets (EOP C04 and ECMWF) by using Fourier transform, modelling, and wavelet analysis. Our new findings include (1) period-instability of free core nutation between 420 and 450 days as well as its large amplitude-variation, (2) re-determined Chandler period and its quality factor, (3) fast decrease in Chandler amplitude after 2010.

The atmosphere strongly affects the Earth’s spin rotation in wide range of timescale from daily to annual. Its dominant role in the seasonal perturbations of both the pole position and spinning rate of the Earth is once again confirmed by a comparison of two recent data sets; i) the Earth orientation parameter and ii) the global atmospheric state. The atmospheric semi-diurnal tide has been known to be a source of the Earth’s spin acceleration, and its magnitude is re-estimated by using an enhanced formulation and an up-dated empirical atmospheric S2 tide model. During the last twenty years, an unusual eastward drift of the Earth’s pole has been observed. The change in the Earth’s inertia tensor due to glacier mass redistribution is directly assessed, and the recent eastward movement of the pole is ascribed to this change. Furthermore, the associated changes in the length of day and UT1 are estimated.