A NASA-funded study has found that climate change is making our days longer as polar ice melts. While researchers say the change is in the milliseconds, they also note that this change is accelerating and could have implications for “precise timekeeping” and space navigation.
Alongside this, another NASA-funded study on the impact of climate-related redistribution of ice and water on the Earth’s rotation has found that this melting of ice sheets and glaciers is also causing the planet to “wobble” as it spins, and its axis to shift in location.
In fact, in the past 120 years, its rotational axis has moved around 30 feet (10 metres)
According to the day-length study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in recent decades, the melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets has accelerated, and this is shifting mass from the poles toward the equatorial ocean.
This, it was explained, causes Earth to decelerate and the day to lengthen.
From 2000 to 2018, the rate of length-of-day increase was 1.33 milliseconds per century, which, it was explained is faster than at any period in the prior 100 years. If emissions continue to rise, this could increase to as much as 2.62 milliseconds per century.
This would overtake the effect of the Moon’s pull on tides, which has been increasing Earth’s length of day by 2.4 milliseconds per century, on average.
However, if emissions were to be “severely reduced,” the lengthening could decelerate by 2100, the researchers outlined.