The atmospheric angular momentum is closely related to variations in the Earth rotation. The atmospheric excitation function (AEF), known also as the atmospheric effective angular momentum function, is introduced in studying the atmospheric excitation of the Earth's variable rotation. It may be separated into two portions, i.e., the “wind” terms due to the atmospheric motion relative to the mantle and the “pressure” terms due to the variations of atmospheric mass distribution evident through surface pressure changes. The AEF wind terms during the period of 1948–2004 are reprocessed from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction‐National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis 6‐hourly wind and pressure fields. Some previous calculations were approximate, in that the wind terms were integrated from an isobaric lower boundary of 1000 hPa. To consider the surface topography effect, however, the AEF is computed by integration using the winds from the Earth's surface to 10 hPa, the top atmospheric model level, instead of from 1000 hPa. For these two cases, only a minor difference, equivalent to ∼0.004 ms in length‐of‐day variation, exists with respect to the axial wind term. However, considerable differences, equivalent to 5∼6 milliseconds of arc in polar motion, are found regarding equatorial wind terms. We further compare the total equatorial AEF (with and without the topography effect) with the polar motion excitation function (PMEF) during the period of 1980–2003. The equatorial AEF gets generally closer to the PMEF, and improved coherences are found between them when the topography effect is included.

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US-Germany co-sponsered satellite gravimetry mission GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment), launched in March 2002, has been producing monthly time series of Earth gravity models up to degree and order of 120. The GRACE mission consists of two identical satellites flying on an almost polar orbit with an altitude of about 300-500 km and satelite-to-satellite ranging of about 220 km. Thanks to the payloads of space-borne GPS receivers, accelerometers and high-precision K-band satelite-to-satellite ranging mesurements, GRACE gravity models are expected to achieve more than one order of magnitude of improvement over previous models at spatial scales of a few hundred kilometers or larger. Recovery of surface mass re-distribution based on GRACE's time-varying gravity models is applied to studies in solid Earth geophysics, oceanography, climatology and geodesy. At secular time scales, GRACE is expected to provide valuable information on global ice changes, whose variations have profound influences on global climate, and in particular, on sea level changes. At seasonal time scales, GRACE is expected to reveal surface water changes with an accuracy of less than 1 cm, or ocean bottom pressure changes with an accuracy of less than 1 mbar (1 mbar =10 2 Pa). These surface mass redistribution measurements would impove our understanding of the global and regional mass and energy cycles that are critical to human life. Using 15 GRACE monthly gravity models covering the period from April 2002 to December 2003, this study compares seasonal water storage changes recovered from GRACE data and hydrology models at global and regional scales, with particular focus on the Yangtze River basin of China. Annual amplitude of 3.4 cm of equivalent water height change is found for the Yangtze River basin with maximum in Spring and Autumn, agreeing with two state-of-the-art hydrology models. The differences between GRACE results and model predictions are less than 1-2 cm. We conclude that satellite gravimetry has huge potentials in monitering water storage changes in large river basins such as Yangtze.

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