Climate crisis is making days longer,
study finds
Melting of ice is slowing planet’s rotation and
could disrupt internet traffic, financial
transactions and GPS. The climate crisis is
causing the length of each day to get longer,
analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice
reshapes the planet.
The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of
how humanity’s actions are transforming the
Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes
that have existed for billions of years. The
change in the length of the day is on the scale of
milliseconds but this is enough to potentially
disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and
GPS navigation, all of which rely on precise
timekeeping.
The length of the Earth’s day has been steadily
increasing over geological time due to the
gravitational drag of the moon on the planet’s
oceans and land. However, the melting of the
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets due to
human-caused global heating has been
redistributing water stored at high latitudes into
the world’s oceans, leading to more water in the
seas nearer the equator. This makes the Earth
more oblate – or fatter – slowing the rotation of
the planet and lengthening the day still further.
The planetary impact of humanity was also
demonstrated recently by research that showed
the redistribution of water had caused the
Earth’s axis of rotation – the north and south
poles – to move. Other work has revealed that
humanity’s carbon emissions are shrinking the
stratosphere.
“We can see our impact as humans on the
whole Earth system, not just locally, like the rise
in temperature, but really fundamentally, altering
how it moves in space and rotates,” said Prof
Benedikt Soja of ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
“Due to our carbon emissions, we have done
this in just 100 or 200 years. Whereas the
governing processes previously had been going
on for billions of years, and that is striking.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/15/climate-crisis-making-days-longer-study