Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds new light on how climate change is affecting our planet’s rotation rate. A team of scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich has found that melting glaciers at the poles are slowing Earth’s rotation, causing days to lengthen at an alarmingly rapid rate.
The main reason for this phenomenon is the movement of huge amounts of water from Greenland and Antarctica towards the equator, which changes the distribution of mass on the Earth, according to Science Alert. It can be likened to the rotational shape in ice skating, where changing the position of the arms affects the speed of rotation.
The length of the day continues to increase.
Although the Earth is commonly thought to be spherical, it is actually flat at the poles and bulges near the equator. However, its shape is not fixed – it changes under the influence of tides, tectonic plate movements, and natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and ETH Zurich used modern observational techniques during their research, such as interferometry, which allows precise measurements of the time it takes for radio waves to reach different points on Earth. These measurements revealed that the length of a day is increasing by several milliseconds compared to the standard measure of 86,400 seconds.
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Moreover, while the most significant factor currently slowing our planet’s rotation is the gravitational pull of the moon, the study authors suggest that by the end of the 21st century, the impact of climate change on day length could exceed the moon’s effects. In a worst-case scenario, with greenhouse gas emissions continuing unabated, climate change could make days 2.2 milliseconds longer by 2100 than currently observed.
Although these changes may seem imperceptible to humans, they are important for space and terrestrial navigation. Precise Earth orientation is crucial for communicating with space probes like Voyager beyond our solar system. Any error, even the smallest in calculations, can lead to significant deviations over these vast distances.
