Glacial melt is slowing Earth’s rotation
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029446
The Daily Mail: The melting of glaciers over the past 100 years has caused Earth’s rotation to slow at a rate of 1 cm per year. That slowing has lengthened Earth’s day by 1/1000th of a second, according to a new paper in Science Advances . “Because glaciers are at high latitudes, when they melt they redistribute water from these high latitudes towards lower latitudes, and like a figure skater who moves his or her arms away from their body, this acts to slow the rotation rate of the Earth,” Harvard University geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica told the Daily Mail. The effect, although tiny, will become more pronounced as climate change causes glaciers to melt more quickly and sea levels to rise.
