One of the most obvious consequences of global warming is the melting of glaciers and rising water levels in the world's oceans. However, there are also less obvious consequences. For example, a recent study showed that an increase in the average temperature on the planet will inevitably lead to a slowdown in the Earth's rotation. Accordingly, the day will last longer. Moreover, as scientists note, temperature changes will affect the speed of rotation of the planet even more than the gravitational attraction of the Moon, and changes will occur at an “unprecedented” speed.
Contents
- 1 Why global warming will change the speed of the Earth's rotation
- 2 What else determines the speed of rotation of the planet
- 3 How climate change affects the length of the day
- 4 Due to climate, the position of the Earth’s geographic poles is changing
Why global warming will change the speed of the Earth’s rotation
The speed of rotation of the body depends on various factors. One of them is the distribution of its mass. For example, everyone probably remembers how we swung on a swing as a child – by tucking in and putting out our legs, we gave the swing acceleration. Using this same principle, skaters change the speed of their rotation on the ice, for example by first bringing their arms in towards their body to speed up and then extending them out to slow down. That is, as the masses move away from the axis of rotation, the speed of rotation of the body slows down.
Only recently have scientists realized that the same thing is happening to our planet. Ice caps concentrated on the pluses, that is, near the axis of rotation, melt. As a result, the mass is transferred closer to the equator, accordingly, the Earth begins to slow down like a figure skater stretching out her arms while spinning. And the higher the temperature on the planet, the faster the glaciers melt, and the more the rotation speed slows down.
What else does the speed of rotation of the planet depend on?
As mentioned above, the speed of rotation is influenced by various factors. For example, the Moon causes the ebb and flow of the tides. In addition, not so long ago scientists discovered that the core of our planet changes the direction of rotation, and this also affects the speed of rotation of the entire Earth.
Therefore, it is very difficult to calculate how the length of the day will change, taking into account the whole complex of factors. However, it is known that currently the Moon has the greatest influence on the rotation of our planet. By the way, it is precisely because of this that there is a large amount of oxygen in the atmosphere of our planet. You can read more about how the slowing down of the planet’s rotation speed is related to the composition of the atmosphere at the link.
Currently, the Moon is causing the Earth to slow down by 2.4 milliseconds every century. This has been happening for millions of years. However, soon, if global warming continues at its current rate, the Moon's impact on the Earth will fade into the background.
How climate change affects the length of the day
As reported in a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the effects of climate change are already contributing to the lengthening of the day. From 1900 to the present, climate has caused the length of the day to increase by 0.8 milliseconds.
If global warming continues unabated, this effect will double by 2100, resulting in an estimated 2.2 milliseconds longer day than the same baseline. As mentioned above, from now on the climate will have a greater influence on the rotation of the planet than the Moon.
It must be said that the current global warming is far from the first in the history of the planet. Sometimes the average temperature reached much higher values than now. For example, Greenland was truly “green”, and even Antarctica had rivers and forests. Of course, the absence of ice caps also led to a slowdown in the Earth's rotation. However, scientists say past warming events may have occurred more slowly, so they had less of an impact on the rotation rate than today.
The changes discovered by scientists, at first glance, seem insignificant — People won’t notice an increase in the day by a few milliseconds. However, these milliseconds are of great importance for space and terrestrial navigation. Knowing the exact orientation of a planet at any given time, for example, is especially important for communicating with spacecraft that are at great distances from the planet, such as Voyager.
Due to climate, the position of the geographic poles changes Earth
It has long been known that the rise in temperature on the planet occurs unevenly; accordingly, glaciers are also not melting symmetrically. For this reason, global warming leads not only to a change in the speed of the Earth's rotation, but also to a shift in the axis of rotation.
According to the results of the study, over the course of several decades, the location of the poles can shift by a meter. However, as with rotation speed, pole displacement is also influenced by other factors, such as continental drift, core movements, etc. Therefore, it is quite difficult to find out the exact value.
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According to scientists, reasons for There is no panic yet, since the detected changes are too small and slow to somehow affect our lives, which cannot be said about many other consequences of global warming. However, sometimes even these minor changes are necessary and deserve close attention.