Global warming has slowed down the Earth’s rotation, and there are already benefits to it

The scientist’s calculations showed that the outflow of meltwater from the pole to the equator has slowed down and will continue to slow down the speed of rotation of our planet. But there is also good news. They concern regular time correction, which leads to program failures.

According to satellite data, enough water from melting polar ice has flowed to Earth’s equator to make the planet’s shape more flattened and less spherical. The best analogy for this phenomenon is the performance of a figure skating element called centering, where the athlete can slow down the speed of rotation by extending his arms to the sides and speed it up by pressing his arms to his sides. Likewise, an increase in the volume of the planet near the equator slows down the speed of its rotation and actually makes the day longer.

“Enough ice has melted that sea levels have risen enough that we can actually see how this has affected the speed of the Earth’s rotation,” says Duncan Agnew.

It is important to note that on a scale of billions and millions of years, the Earth’s rotation rate has been decreasing. This was driven by the gravitational influence of the Moon on the oceans, which created a braking effect. For example, analysis of geological deposits shows that 1.4 billion years ago a day on Earth lasted 19 hours.

With the advent of atomic clocks in the 60s of the last century, scientists began to notice that the speed of the Earth’s rotation was increasing. Since space flight, radar, navigation, computers and various electronics began, the change in the speed of the planet had to be somehow correlated with coordinated universal time based on atomic clocks. Since 1972, the leap second was introduced for this purpose, which made it possible to equalize the measured time and the real daily rotation of the Earth. Everything was fine before the spread of computers and programs for which the extra second became an incredible headache. It was impossible to take it into account – it was introduced by the command method by authorized organizations.

But real chaos could come with the introduction of a negative second, which was never announced. It was expected that it could be used in 2026. The fact is that the Earth’s core is liquid, and from about the 70s, the movement of flows in the planet’s core began to accelerate the Earth’s rotation. This manifested itself in the fact that from a certain point onwards, the leap second was added less frequently. Finally, in 2026, the Earth could overtake the daily readings of atomic clocks, and one second would have to be subtracted from universal time.

Duncan Agnew’s work has shown that, thanks to the melting of the polar ice caps, the Earth’s speed has decreased so much that the subtraction of one second from universal time can now be delayed by three years – until 2029 – and, in general, will have to be introduced less frequently. For metrologists, this is a balm for the soul, because no one understands what such a time correction would entail. For the scientist himself, this is an opportunity to once again show with examples that human activity directly and very strongly affects our planet.