The climate crisis is making days longer, and it’s bad news for tech. According to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, climate change is slowing down the Earth’s rotation.
As ice sheet and glacier melting accelerates, rising sea levels redistribute mass from the poles to the equator, increasing the Earth’s oblateness and resulting in an extremely slight slowdown of its spin. In the paper, authors Mostafa Kiani Shahvandi, Surendra Adhikari, Mathieu Dumberry, and Benedikt Soja note that while previously the natural rate of slowing varied between 0.3 and 1.0 millisecond per century (ms/cy) since the year 2000, it has increased to 1.33 ms/cy.
Though this may not seem like a significant difference, researchers say there are problematic implications for accurate timekeeping, GPS, and space navigation.
Previous studies have proven humanity’s dramatic influences on the planet, including the way water redistribution is shifting the Earth’s axis.
