Global warming is causing North Pole to change direction
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.027581
New Scientist : The melting of Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets is affecting the movement of the North Pole. Since 1899, when observations began, the pole’s position had been drifting southward about 10 cm per year due to changes in the distribution of Earth’s mass. But in 2005 it changed direction and started moving eastward. To find out why, Jianli Chen of the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues used data from NASA’s GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites. They found that the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and mountain glaciers, and the resulting change in sea level, account for 90% of the eastward shift. “The driving force for the sudden change is climate change,” says Chen, who presented the group’s findings at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
