The Elusive Stationary Geoid

We discuss the various problems occurring when trying to fix a geoid or geopotential model using sea level observations sampled during a limited time span from a bounded geographical domain. Such problems are on the one hand aliasing and spectral leakage, and on the other, the non-conservation of matter over only part of the world ocean. In the light of these issues we discuss whether it is sensible to include in a definition of the global geoid the radially symmetric part of either the mean sea level field itself, or its linear or nonlinear time dependence, arriving at a negative conclusion. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.