Search for variability in Newton's constant using local gravitational acceleration measurements

In a recent work, Dai (2021 Phys. Rev. D 103 064059) searched for a variability in Newton's constant G using the International Geodynamics and Earth Tide Service based gravitational acceleration measurements. However, this analysis, obtained from chi (2) minimization, did not incorporate the errors in the gravitational acceleration measurements. We carry out a similar search with one major improvement, wherein we incorporate these aforementioned errors. To model any possible variation in the gravitational acceleration, we fit the data to four models: a constant value, two sinusoidal models, and finally, a linear model for the variation of gravitational acceleration. We find that none of the four models provides a good fit to the data, showing that there is no evidence for a periodicity or a linear temporal variation in the acceleration measurements. We then redid these analyses after accounting for an unknown intrinsic scatter. After this, we find that although a constant model is still favored over the sinusoidal models, the linear variation for G is marginally preferred over a constant value, using information theory-based methods.