Climate warming also has an impact on time: the earth rotates less quickly on its axis due to melting ice caps

Climate change and in particular the melting ice caps mean that the Earth rotates less quickly on its axis. In this way, climate change also has an impact on time. This was evident from a study published in the journal on Wednesday Nature. “The fact that humans have influenced the rotation of the Earth is astonishing.”

The universal time indication (UTC) is based on the speed at which the Earth rotates on its axis and atomic clocks. Because the speed of the Earth’s rotation is not constant, so-called ‘leap seconds’ had to be added regularly to bring the two back into balance. However, the Earth is now starting to spin faster and faster on its axis, so it looks like a second will have to be subtracted, which has never happened before.

An additional special feature is that the melting of the ice caps appears to be an inhibiting factor. The meltwater moves from the poles towards the equator, making the Earth a bit wider there and therefore slowing down the speed somewhat.

The melting of the ice caps “has been large enough to noticeably affect the rotation of the entire Earth,” Duncan Agnew, professor of geophysics at the University of California – San Diego and author of the study told CNN. “The fact that humans have influenced the rotation of the Earth is astonishing.”

Due to the delay, the leap second would not have to be subtracted until 2029, while it previously looked like this would already be the case in 2026. If that happens, many computers will have to be reprogrammed. “No one ever anticipated that the Earth would accelerate so that we would have to subtract a leap second,” Agnew said.