Climate change is even affecting the speed of the Earth! By slowing down the planet's rotation, it's making our days longer. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Earth is expanding!
Climate change is even affecting the speed of the Earth! By slowing down the planet's rotation, it's making our days longer. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Earth is expanding!
Scientists indicate that human-induced emissions could have greater impacts on Earth than expected. New findings show that melting glaciers might affect the length of a day more significantly than previously predicted. Climate change is slowing Earth's rotation, causing days to lengthen. Although this change is only a few milliseconds, it could have significant effects on our modern technological systems, which rely on precise atomic clocks.
For thousands of years, the gravitational effect of the moon has been slowing Earth's rotation, adding a few milliseconds to a day every century, as proven by scientists. However, now the human factor is also affecting Earth's speed and, consequently, the length of a day.
Due to global warming, the melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets cause water to redistribute from the poles to the equator. This changes Earth's shape by flattening the poles and widening the middle, which slows down the rotation speed.
However, if humans continue to consume fossil fuels and Earth continues to warm as a result, this effect could become greater than the moon's influence. This suggests that climate change could be the most decisive factor in this context.
According to a report by Euro News, a study conducted by scientists from ETH Zurich and supported by NASA used observational data and climate models to calculate the effect of global warming on the length of a day between 1900 and 2100. In the 20th century, sea level rise caused the length of a day to change by 0.3 to 1 millisecond.
If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, glaciers melt faster, and oceans warm further, the length of a day could increase by 2.62 milliseconds by the end of the century. This could surpass the moon's influence, becoming the most decisive factor.