The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Humphrey told the Guardian that this "tells you how strong this mass change is – it's so big that it can change the axis of the Earth."īut the movement of the Earth’s axis is not large enough to affect daily life, he said: It could change the length of a day, but only by milliseconds. The same thing happens to the Earth as weight is shifted from one area to the other. If the weight of a top shifts, the spinning top would lean and wobble as its rotational axis changes. In the past, only natural factors such as ocean currents and the convection of hot rock deep in the planet contributed to the pole drift, the Guardian said.Ĭlimate scientist Vincent Humphrey of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, who was not involved in the new research, said the Earth spins around its axis like a top. In addition to melting glaciers, the pumping of groundwater has contributed to the shift in Earth's axis, the study said. Since 1980, each pole has moved roughly 13 feet. More Earth science: Scientists say Earth is spinning faster than it has in decades ![]() They might alter the length of the day by a millisecond or so over time, Vincent Humphrey, a climate scientist at the University of Zurich who was not involved in this research, said in a statement.“The faster ice melting under global warming was the most likely cause of the directional change of the polar drift in the 1990s,” study co-author Shanshan Deng of the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a statement. Overall, the changes in polar drift aren’t noticeable in daily life. Melting ice sheets, combined with groundwater pumping forĪgriculture, altered the water distribution on the planet enough to make the Uptick in Storms Expected This Season 00:41. Extreme Heat Rages on, but There's Some 'Slight' Relief Ahead 01:06. The best explanation for the changes to the poles in the 1990s is human-causedĬlimate change. Earth’s Axis Has Shifted Because of Climate Change 00:38. Possible scenarios of total water distribution around the world and found that Tricky, because there were no direct satellite observations of waterĭistribution around the globe from that era. Observed polar drift in the 1990s, but uncovering the cause of that drift was Glacial loss is coming from the United States and Canada, the study found. Researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Of earth system sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and a Rotation is going to shift slightly,” explained Isabella Velicogna, a professor ![]() The same thing happens to the Earth as weight is shifted from. If the weight of a top is moved around, the spinning top would start to lean and wobble as its rotational axis changes. Spinning top, and if you put more mass on one side or the other, the axis of The Earth spins around an axis kind of like a top, explains Vincent Humphrey, a climate scientist at the University of Zurich who was not involved in this research. Recently found more evidence for, ultimately shifts the planet’s axis, ![]() Majorly redistributes weight on the globe. Satellite data from 2002 and later had already shown that climate change is altering this weight distribution, largely because melting glaciers and ice sheets have caused the North and South poles to drift.įrom glaciers and ice sheets migrates from land into the sea (as water), which Glacial melting due to global warming has probably been altering Earth’s poles since at least the 1990s, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters.Įarth’s spin on its axis is determined, in part, by the distribution of weight around the globe, in the same way the spin of a top is determined by its shape.
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