This story was originally published by guardian and is reproduced here as part thereof Climate Desk cooperation
The length of each day is getting longer because of the climate crisis, the analysis shows, as melting polar ice masses reshape the planet.
The phenomenon is a fascinating demonstration of how human activity is transforming the Earth, scientists say, challenging natural processes that have existed for billions of years.
The change in day length is on the scale of milliseconds but is enough to disrupt Internet traffic, financial transactions, and potentially GPS Navigation, which all depends on precise timekeeping.
The length of Earth’s day has been increasing over geologic time due to the Moon’s gravitational pull on the planet’s oceans and land. But melting Greenland And human-caused global warming is causing Antarctic ice sheets to redistribute water stored at high latitudes to the world’s oceans, resulting in more water in oceans near the equator. This makes the Earth more massive – slowing the planet’s rotation and making the days longer.
Planetary influence on humanity was recently demonstrated by Research That shows the redistribution of water Earth’s axis rotates – North and South Pole – moved. Other works revealed that of humanity Carbon emissions are shrinking the stratosphere.
“We as humans can see our impact on the entire Earth system, not just locally, like increasing temperatures, but really fundamentally changing how it moves and rotates in space,” said Professor Benedict Soja of ETH Zurich, Switzerland. World’s leading university in science and technology. “Because of our carbon emissions, we’ve only done that in 100 or 200 years. But governing processes have been going on for billions of years before, and that’s interesting.”
Human timekeeping is based on atomic clocks, which are highly precise. However, the exact time of a day – one rotation of the Earth – varies due to lunar tides, climatic effects and some other factors, such as the slow return of the Earth’s crust after the retreat of the ice sheets formed during the last Ice Age. .
These differences need to be accounted for, says Soja: “All datacenters that run Internet, communications and financial transactions are based on precise timing. Our navigation, especially satellites and spacecraft, requires a precise knowledge of time.
“Because of our carbon emissions, we’ve only done that in 100 or 200 years. But governing processes have been going on for billions of years before, and that’s interesting.”
research, Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, used observations and computer reconstructions to assess the effect of ice melt on day length. Between 1900 and 2000 the rate of slowing varied between 0.3 and 1.0 milliseconds per century. But since 2000, as Melting is acceleratedThe rate of change has also accelerated to 1.3 milliseconds per century.
“The current rate is probably higher than at any time in the past few thousand years,” the researchers said. “Even if greenhouse gas emissions are drastically curtailed, they are projected to remain at a level of about 1.0 milliseconds per century for decades to come.” If emissions are not reduced, the slowing rate will increase to 2.6 milliseconds per century by 2100, surpassing lunar tides as the single largest contributor to long-term variations in day length.
Dr. University of Alicante in Spain. Santiago Belda, who was not part of the research team, said: “This study is a major breakthrough because it confirms that the alarming loss of Greenland and its ice Antarctica Suffering has a direct effect on day length, making our days longer. This variation in day length has important implications not only for how we measure time, but also for GPS and other technologies that govern our modern lives.”
