Climate Change May Be Making Our Days A Little Longer &am...

What’s Happening

Breaking it down: Discover how rising sea levels are slowing the Earth s rotation and what that means for the future.

Climate change appears to be making our days a little longer. According to a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, rising sea levels are slowing the Earth’s spin. (shocking, we know)

33 milliseconds per century, it is not enough to squeeze in a quick workout or watch another episode of Bridgerton, but the new paper shows just how unusual it is.

The Details

Lead author Mostafa Kiani Shahvandi told Discover the rate we see today is “almost unprecedented” — a fact that “shows this anomalous rate is anthropogenic. ” : The Moon Is Moving Farther From Earth Each Year, and Tides Are the Reason The Impact Of Rising Sea Levels On Earth’s Spin While the 24-hour day has become a fixture of the calendar, the Earth’s rotation is open to variation.

Factors such as the moon’s gravitational pull and geophysical processes can influence the planets rotational speed, and even without human intervention, it can vary by approximately 30 milliseconds. Crucially, but, these fluctuations occur on time scales lasting hundreds of thousands of years.

Why This Matters

A 2024 study in PNAS highlighted another factor that can affect the speed of Earth’s rotation — rising sea levels caused , itself a result of climate change. According to the researchers’ calculations, from 2000 to 2020, the length of the day has increased at a rate of 1. 33 milliseconds per 100 years.

Scientists and researchers are watching this development closely.

The Bottom Line

This change is because of the redistribution of mass that occurs when glaciers melt, and sea levels rise. In a press release , Kiani Shahvandi compared the Earth to a figure skater “who spins more slowly once they stretch their arms, and more rapidly when they keep their hands close to the body.

What’s your take on this whole situation?