The long period variation of the earth rotation is generally explained by the tidal friction. The tidal friction, however,
is not the only source to influence the earth rotation in long term. In this paper, by means of the interaction between the
solar wind and the magnetosphere of the earth, the additional magnetic pressure will exist in the magnetic tail due to the
crowding and sparseness of the magnetic lines in the consideration of the earth rotation, which could be considered as a source
of effecting the long term variation of the earth rotation. It is shown in this paper that this mechanism can produce angular
deceleration of the Earth rotation in the magnitude of ω = −1.7 × 10-22 s-2. This result might be a prompt to search for other
sources in the secular variation of the rate of the Earth rotation variation further in order to regulate the observed result
with the theoretical one.
This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.