'Unprecedented' Sea Level Rise Is Making Earth's Days Longer
Published Jul 15, 2024 at 3:00 PM EDT
NASA Animation Shows Sea Level Rise In Past 30 Years
By Jess Thomson
Science Reporter
Our changing climate is impacting our planet in a huge number of ways—ranging from powerful hurricanes and intense droughts to invasive species and ocean acidification—but there might be another bizarre effect that you've never heard of.
Climate change might actually be slowly changing the length of a day on Earth, according to a new paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This is a result of sea levels rising—because of increased temperatures and the melting of the polar ice caps—thereby causing a redistribution of mass from the poles of our planet toward the equator.
"Modern climate change is unprecedented. In recent decades, it has accelerated the melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets, leading to a rise in sea level," researchers wrote in the paper. "The melting of ice sheets and global glaciers results in sea-level rise, a pole-to-Equator mass transport increasing Earth's oblateness and resulting in an increase in the length of day (LOD)."
https://www.newsweek.com/sea-level-rise-climate-change-earth-day-longer-1925252