Did you know Earth’s days are actually getting longer? Yep, you heard that right!
Thanks to rising sea levels, the time it takes our planet to complete a single rotation is stretching out.
Let’s dive deeper into this intriguing phenomenon.
Climate change is wreaking havoc around us, from scorching heatwaves and rampant wildfires to devastating hurricanes and crippling droughts. Now, it’s even messing with the length of our days.
A recent study in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) highlights that our days are slowly but surely getting longer.
The culprit? Rising sea levels, driven by global warming, which are melting the polar ice caps and altering Earth’s mass distribution.
Though a day is technically 24 hours or 86,400 seconds, it’s now ticking by just a bit slower than that.
According to the study titled “The increasingly dominant role of climate change on length of day variations,” there’s a clear explanation behind this trend.
Researchers Benedikt Soja, Mostafa Kiani Shahvandi, Surendra Adhikari, Mathieu Dumberry, and Siddhartha Mishra have found that the redistribution of mass from melting ice is tweaking Earth’s rotation axis, thus dragging out our days.
Soja explained, “Modern climate change is unprecedented. In recent decades, it has accelerated the melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets, leading to a rise in sea level.
“This pole-to-equator mass transport has significantly increased the Earth’s oblateness and length of day (LOD) since 1900. We show that the present rate of increase is higher than at any point in the 20th century.
“Under high emission scenarios, the climate-induced LOD rate will continue to increase and may reach a rate that is twice as large as at present, surpassing the impact of lunar tidal friction.
“These findings signify the unprecedented effect of climate change on planet Earth and have implications for precise timekeeping and space navigation, among others.”
The study combined observational data and computer models to pinpoint exactly how ice melt affects day length.
They discovered that from 1900 to 2000, Earth’s rotation slowed down by about 0.3 to 1.0 millisecond per century. Since 2000, this rate has picked up speed, climbing to 1.3 milliseconds per century.
Soja added, “Projections of future climate warming under high emission scenarios suggest that the climate-induced LOD rate may reach 2.62 ± 0.79 ms/cy by 2100, overtaking lunar tidal friction as the single most important contributor to the long-term LOD variations.”