This paper summarizes the activity of the chosen Polish geodetic research teams in 2015–2018 in the fields of Earth: rotation, dynamics as well as magnetic field. It has been prepared for the needs of the presentation on the 27th International Union of Geodesy and Geodynamics General Assembly, Montreal, Canada. The part concerning Earth rotation is mostly focused on the use of modelling of diurnal and subdiurnal components of Earth rotation by including low frequency components of polar motion and UT1 in the analysis, study of free oscillations in Earth rotation derived from both space-geodetic observations of polar motion and the time variation of the second degree gravitational field coefficients derived from Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) observations, new methods of monitoring of Earth rotation, as well as studies on applications of the Ring Laser Gyroscope (RLG) for direct and continuous measurements of changes in Earth rotation and investigations of the hydrological excitation of polar motion. Much attention was devoted to the GRACE-derived gravity for explaining the influence of surface mass redistributions on polar motion. Monitoring of the geodynamical phenomena is divided into study on local and regional dynamics using permanent observations, investigation on tidal phenomena, as well as research on hydrological processes and sea level variation parts. Finally, the recent research conducted by Polish scientists on the Earth’s magnetic field is described.

This paper presents the summary of research activities carried out in Poland in 2011–2014 in the field of Earth rotation and geodynamics by several Polish research institutions. It contains a summary of works on Earth rotation, including evaluation and prediction of its parameters and analysis of the related excitation data as well as research on associated geodynamic phenomena such as geocentre motion, global sea level change and hydrological processes. The second part of the paper deals with monitoring of geodynamic phenomena. It contains analysis of geodynamic networks of local, and regional scale using space (GNSS and SLR) techniques, Earth tides monitoring with gravimeters and water-tube hydrostatic clinometer, and the determination of secular variation of the Earth’ magnetic field.

For over two decades, an essential information about global monthly gravity variations is provided by the GRACE mission and its successor, the GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission. The temporal variations in gravity field from GRACE/GRACEFO are determined based on the measurement of distance changes between two identical satellites using microwave ranging instruments. This process is carried out by various processing centers, which adopt different processing strategies and background models. This causes discrepancies in the resulting gravity fields.We address this problem by determining a monthly homogenous GRACE-FO gravity field solutions from June 2018 to November 2022 as provided by different processing centers included in the Science Data System (SDS) project, i.e. the Center for Space Research (CSR), the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). We test three different weighting schemes. We show that for the last 4 years, at least 65% of continental areas are characterized by water decrease. We show that proposed merged solutions contain more signal information than individual ones based on the square root of the degree variance values.We note that the largest signal differences between individual and combined solutions occur for sectoral coefficients up to degree 40, and for zonal coefficients, the signal differences are twice as small.We also present that the differences in the spherical harmonic coefficients cause differences in global and local equivalent water height (EWH) changes. For example, the proposed merged solutions reduce root mean square scatter ofEWHby 5–15% comparing to individual solutions.

Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission data is widely used in various fields of science. GRACE explored changes of the gravity field regularly from April 2002 to June 2017. In the following research, we examine variance of signal contained in two different formats of GRACE data: standard spherical harmonics and mass concentration blocks (so-called “mascons”) solutions, both provided in the most recent releases. For spherical harmonics-based solution, we use monthly gravity field solutions provided up to degree and order (d/o) 96 by three different computing centers, i.e. the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) and the Center for Space Research (CSR). For the mass concentration blocks, we use values of total water storage provided by the CSR, JPL and the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) computing centers, which we convert to spherical harmonic coefficients up to d/o 96. We show that using the anisotropic DDK3 filter to smooth the north-south stripes present in total wate storage obtained from standard spherical harmonics solution leaves more information than common isotropic Gaussian filter. In the case of mascons, GSFC solution contains much more information than the CSR and JPL releases, relevant for corresponding d/o. Differences in variance of signal arise from different background models as well as various shape and size of mascons used during processing of GRACE observations.

This paper summarizes the activity of the chosen Polish geodetic research teams in 2019–2022 in the fields of the Earth rotation and geodynamics. This publication has been prepared for the needs of the presentation of Polish scientists’ activities on the 28th International Union of Geodesy and Geodynamics General Assembly, Berlin, Germany. The part concerning Earth rotation is mostly focused on the estimation of the geophysical excitation of polar motion using data from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its follow-on (GRACE-FO) missions, and on the improvement of the determination of Earth rotation parameters based on the Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS), and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) satellite techniques. The part concerning geodynamics is focused on geodetic time series analysis for geodynamical purposes and monitoring of the vertical ground movements induced by mass transport within the Earth’s system, monitoring of the crustal movements using GNSS and newly applied Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), discussing the changes of the landslides and its monitoring using geodetic methods as well as investigations of seismic events and sea-level changes with geodetic methods. Finally, the recent research activities carried out by Polish scientists in the international projects is presented.