• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Why Has Earth’s Rotation Tilted By Nearly 80 Centimeters?

November 27, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

It’s amazing just how impactful our behavior can be. Even small acts, like using the taps in our homes, can contribute to significant changes across the planet. This may sound trivial, but over the last 20 years alone, the pumping of groundwater – mostly for drinking – has caused Earth’s rotation to tilt eastwards by nearly 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) and sea levels to rise. It seems our water use is an important factor to consider when we think about climate change.

The planet’s rotational pole, the point around which Earth rotates, is not fixed. It moves in a process known as polar motion, when the position of Earth’s rotational pole varies in relation to its crust.

Advertisement

This process can be thought of as a spinning top; if the top experiences a change in its weight distribution, then it will spin differently. The distribution of water across the planet operates like this. As it shifts, it changes how Earth rotates.

“Earth’s rotational pole actually changes a lot,” Ki-Weon Seo, a geophysicist at Seoul National University, explained in a statement about a 2023 study on the subject, published in Geophysical Research Letters. “Our study shows that among climate-related causes, the redistribution of groundwater actually has the largest impact on the drift of the rotational pole.”

Groundwater is different to water that exists in rivers and lakes. It is the water that is hidden underground and accumulates from rain and other forms of precipitation. As the water soaks into the ground, it slowly percolates down into natural aquifers – underground reservoirs. This type of water is an important feature of the water cycle as it provides water even during times of less frequent rain.

Today, around 50 percent of the world’s population relies on groundwater for its drinking water, and a third of the world’s irrigation. Traditionally, this type of water was accessed by humans through wells, boreholes and so on, but throughout the 20th century, modern societies began to exploit groundwater reservoirs at a much larger scale.

Advertisement

Between 1993 and 2010, humans pumped 2,150 gigatons of groundwater (that’s about 9.09 quadrillion cups of water).

In 2016, scientists showed that the distribution of water was able to change the rotation of Earth. But at the time, the phenomenon lacked detail about how groundwater use might be involved in that.

This is where the study by Ki-Weon Seo and colleagues came into play. The team modeled observed changes in the drift of Earth’s rotational pole and the movement of water. They ran multiple scenarios and the only one that matched the 4.3 centimeters (1.7 inches) of drift per year that we have seen was the one that included the 2,150 gigatons of groundwater redistribution calculated previously.

“I’m very glad to find the unexplained cause of the rotation pole drift,” Seo said. “On the other hand, as a resident of Earth and a father, I’m concerned and surprised to see that pumping groundwater is another source of sea-level rise.”

Advertisement

This study effectively quantified the role groundwater pumping plays on polar motion, and shows just how important it is. But the research also has implications for our efforts to address climate change as well. Although polar shifts caused by this type of exploitation won’t likely change how at-risk areas experience the seasons, the polar shifts could have impacts for the climate.

“Observing changes in Earth’s rotational pole is useful for understanding continent-scale water storage variations,” Seo said.

“Polar motion data are available from as early as the late 19th century. So, we can potentially use those data to understand continental water storage variations during the last 100 years. Were there any hydrological regime changes resulting from the warming climate? Polar motion could hold the answer.”

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Fed likely to open bond-buying ‘taper’ door, but hedge on outlook
  2. Analysis: Energy costs add to emerging central banks’ inflation headache
  3. Generation Alpha: What’s In Store For The World’s Incoming Cohort Of Humans?
  4. At Least 11 Donkeys Have Dropped Dead In Death Valley From Toxic Algae Bloom

Source Link: Why Has Earth's Rotation Tilted By Nearly 80 Centimeters?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • When Red Devil Spiders Arrived On A New Island, Their Genome Dramatically Shrank In Half
  • Is This The World’s Oldest Story? Ancient Human Tale About The Seven Sisters May Be From 100,000 BCE
  • This Pill Is Actually A Tiny Printer That Repairs Internal Injuries Using Biocompatible Ink
  • “This Is Amazing”: Scientists Have Found Evidence Of A Long-Lost World Deep Within The Earth
  • From The Shiniest World To Lava And Eternal Darkness, These Are The Weirdest Known Planets
  • Do Sharks Have Bones?
  • The Zombie Awakens: A Volcano Is Showing “First Signs” Of Unrest After 700,000 Years Of Quiet
  • Two Of The World’s Biggest Earthquakes Seem To Be Synched Together
  • California Has A New State Snake, And It’s A 1.6-Meter-Long Giant
  • Experimental Nanoparticle “Super-Vaccines” Stop Breast, Pancreatic, And Skin Cancers In Their Tracks
  • New Nightmare Fuel Unlocked: Watch The First Known Capture Of A Shrew By A False Widow Spider
  • Peculiar Glow In The Milky Way Might Be Dark Matter Signature
  • “I Was Scared To Death”: Missouri’s Great Cobra Scare Of 1953 Was Eventually Solved After 35 Years
  • Two Spacecraft To Fly Through Comet 3I/ATLAS’s Ion Tail – Will They Be Able To Catch Something?
  • Pioneering Heavy Water Detection Suggests Earth’s Water Might Be Older Than The Sun
  • PhD Students’ Groundbreaking New Technique Rescues JWST’s Highest Resolution Data
  • Popcorn-Like Parasites And Weird Worms Among 14 New Species Discovered In The World’s Oceans
  • Poem From 1181 CE Cairo Appears To Reference A Rare Galactic Supernova
  • With “Iridescent Live Colors”, Newly Discovered Beautiful Dwarfgoby Lives Up To Its Name (Mostly)
  • “Anti-Tail” And Odd 594-Kilometer Feature Found On Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS By Keck Observatory
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version