According to new research, the effects of climate change produced by humans are so severe that they are really interfering with time. According to a study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, polar ice melt brought on by global warming is altering the speed at which Earth rotates and lengthening the length of each day.
This trend is expected to pick up speed this century as humans continue to spew pollution that warms the planet. Although the changes are minute—a few milliseconds every day—they have a significant effect on the computer systems we have grown accustomed to using, such as GPS, in our high-tech, hyperconnected society. It’s more evidence of the enormous influence that people are having on the environment. The report’s author and geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Surendra Adhikari, said, “This is a testament to the gravity of ongoing climate change.” The number of hours, minutes, and seconds in a day on Earth are determined by the rotational speed of the planet, which is governed by a complicated web of interrelated forces.
These include the planet’s fluid core processes, the continuous effects of massive glaciers melting following the previous ice age, and the melting of polar ice as a result of climate change. But for millennia, the moon’s influence has ruled, extending a day’s duration by a few milliseconds per century. The pull of the moon on Earth causes the oceans to swell in its direction, progressively decreasing the planet’s rotation. Although longer days and the melting of polar ice have been linked by scientists in the past, the new research indicates that global warming has a greater impact on time than prior research has indicated.
