The disastrous consequences of climate change, present and future, are countless. But among those that almost no one expected, we find the fact that the rotation of the Earth is gradually slowing down, which is causing the length of our days, explains NPR.
This decrease in rotation speed is due to the massive melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica. Result: the oceans are gaining volume, which creates a redistribution of the planet’s mass. Gradually, it is increasingly concentrated around the equator, hence the fact that the Earth is slower to rotate.
This simple fact constitutes “a testimony to the seriousness of climate change”says Surendra Adhikari, who works for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Research Laboratory. The scientist comes to sign a study quite worrying on the subject, which indicates that the change in the length of an Earth day, even tiny, can have a significant impact on the functioning of our planet.
It’s only a beginning
The change due to melting ice may seem small: it is about 1.33 milliseconds per century. While the human mind cannot obviously notice this change, it can nevertheless affect computer systems responsible for monitoring financial transactions, but also GPS and electrical networks.
In reality, Adhikari points out, not all days are exactly the same length, even in normal times. Normally, the influence of the Moon can cause fluctuations, as can the speed of rotation of the Earth’s inner core, which is not fixed. Even movements of the Earth’s crust can have an impact on the length of the Earth’s cycle.
On the other hand, the 10 centimeter rise in average sea level since 1993 (to which at least another 5 centimeters will have to be added by the end of the century) is causing much faster and more significant upheavals than previously. According to the calculations of Surendra Adhikari and his team, the loss of speed of 1.33 milliseconds per century could be almost doubled before the year 2100, to reach 2.62.
As a result, it will probably eventually be necessary to adjust the world clock, as has been the case several times in the past. Since 1972, 27 seconds have been added to our official international time in order to compensate for the slowdown in the Earth’s rotation. But this operation does not please everyone: several companies in the tech world have, for example, made their discontent knownclaiming that these adjustments were likely to cause the collapse of some networks.
The fact remains that all the scientists working on this issue agree on one point: compared to other effects of climate change, the increase in the length of days is completely insignificant. “If you live in a low-lying coastal area, you may not feel concerned, recognizes Judah Levine, a physicist at National Institue of Standards and Technology. That’s the least of your worries. You have much bigger problems to deal with.”
Source: www.slate.fr
