Emily Chan
Thanks to human-caused climate change, the length of Earth’s days is getting increasingly longer, and the spin of our planet will become more wobbly in the future, according to new studies.
Although these changes will be undetectable to us at first, they could have serious impacts on the future of humanity. They could alter Earth’s inner core, interfere with space travel, and make us introduce negative leap seconds.
A typical day on Earth lasts about 86,400 seconds. But every year, the exact time it takes for our planet to complete a single full rotation can differ, if only by fractions of milliseconds, due to processes such as tectonic plate shifts, gravitational tugging from the moon, or changes to the inner core’s rotation.
Human-caused climate change is just another factor that contributes to the change in the length of our days. In the past few decades, ice has been melting at increasingly rapid rates, particularly in Greenland and Antarctica, because of global warming. The melting ice is causing sea levels to rise.
The majority of this excess water accumulates near the equator, which makes our planet a little thicker around the middle. Since more weight is being distributed farther away from the center of the planet, this slows down the Earth’s spin.
In a new study, researchers used an artificial intelligence program to track the effects of climate change on Earth’s spin. The program combined actual data with the laws of physics to predict how the Earth’s spin will look in the years ahead. It offered more precise estimates of the length of our days than previous similar studies.
Another study conducted by the same team of researchers recently showed that the increased amount of water near the equator is moving the planet’s axis of rotation. As a result, the magnetic poles are wobbling farther away from the axis every year.
This phenomenon has likely been occurring for at least the last three decades, as found in previous studies. But, the new study suggests that the axis will move even farther from the axis than predicted.
The Earth’s rotation slowing down isn’t a new thing. For millennia, the rotation has been affected by a process called lunar tidal friction, where the moon’s gravitational effect on the oceans pulls water away from the poles. At present, it is causing our days to be longer by around 2.3 milliseconds every 100 years.
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