Climate Change Extending Length Of Earth Days At ‘Unprecedented’ Rate, Study Finds
As the climate crisis continues to accelerate, new research reveals that the melting of the polar ice caps is causing the Earth to spin more slowly, extending the length of days at an ‘unprecedented’ rate.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, highlights how water flowing from Greenland and Antarctica adds more mass around the equator.
This phenomenon is similar to “when a figure skater does a pirouette, first holding her arms close to her body and then stretching them out,” explained co-author Benedikt Soja of ETH Zurich.
“The initially fast rotation becomes slower because the masses move away from the axis of rotation, increasing physical inertia,” Soja added.
Earth, typically described as a sphere, is more accurately an ‘oblate spheroid’ that bulges around the equator, resembling a satsuma.
Its shape is constantly changing due to the impacts of daily tides, tectonic plate drift, and abrupt shifts caused by earthquakes and volcanoes.
The study utilised advanced observational techniques, including Very Long Baseline Interferometry and the Global Positioning System, to measure Earth’s rotation with extreme precision. Historical eclipse records spanning millennia were also examined.
“If humans continue to emit greenhouse gases at a high rate, the effect of a warming climate will be greater than that of the Moon’s pull by the end of the 21st century,” said co-author Surendra Adhikari of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Currently, the Moon’s gravitational pull causes a deceleration of 2.40 milliseconds per century through “tidal friction.”
From 1900 to the present, climate change has already caused days to lengthen by about 0.8 milliseconds. Under the worst-case scenario of high emissions, climate alone could extend days by 2.2 milliseconds by 2100, compared to the baseline.
Although this increase might not be perceptible to humans, ” it holds significant implications for space and Earth navigation,” said Adhikari.
Knowing exactly where the Earth is pointing in space is crucial when talking to a spaceship like Voyager, which is really far away.
Even a tiny mistake of just a centimeter can add up to being kilometers off-target by the time the signal reaches the spaceship.