High-precision polar motion prediction using EOP_20_C04 and EAM based on CSLS plus AR and CSLS plus LSTM methods

High-precision prediction of polar motion (PM) plays an important role in fields such as astronomy, geodesy, navigation and aerospace. Incorporating information on the effective angular momentum (EAM) of the geophysical fluid is an effective way to improve the precision of PM prediction. Based on the EOP_20_C04 data set and the EAM function, this study applies complex segmented least-squares (CSLS) + the long short term memory (LSTM) neural network and CSLS + autoregression (AR) models to predict PM. For the 6-d PM prediction, the mean absolute errors (MAEs) achieved by CSLS+AR are 1.03 and 0.8 mas in the X- and Y-directions, respectively, corresponding to reductions of 45.80 and 31.97 per cent when compared to predictions reported routinely in Bulletin A of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS). For the 365-d PM prediction, the MAEs gained by CSLS+LSTM model are 14.58 and 10.59 mas in the X- and Y-directions, respectively, corresponding to reductions of 28.17 and 51.09 per cent compared to predictions of the Bulletin A, and the prediction accuracy attained by CSLS+LSTM is higher than other prediction schemes. The experimental results show that, when considering EAM information, the CSLS+AR model can achieve better prediction accuracy for short-term PM prediction, however, the CSLS+LSTM model is more effective for medium- and long-term PM prediction owning to the excellent nonlinear fitting capability of the LSTM deep learning algorithm.