JOIN OUR WHATSAPP CHANNEL
New study reveals global warming is slowing down earth's rotation; also delaying first-ever deletion of leap second
According to a recent study, the effects of global warming on the polar ice caps are offsetting this acceleration, delaying the requirement for a deleted leap second until 2028 or 2029.
-
Change in the physics of the planet's liquid outer core have caused the Earth's rotation to speed uP
-
This growth raised the prospect that a leap second could soon be deleted by scientists
-
However, the earth's rotation has slowed down leading to the delay in the deletion of a second
Although the speed of Earth's rotation appears to be constant, numerous little variations go unnoticed by the majority of the planet's 8 billion inhabitants. A new study suggests that the earth's rotation is being slowed down by the shift of mass from the poles to the rest of the oceans, also known as polar ice melt. Other factors that can alter the speed of the earth's rotation include earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal pressures, and wind patterns.
Earth's rotation slows down and delays the deletion of a second
It's interesting to note that this is postponing a historic event: the first-ever deletion of a leap second. A speed increase is being offset by the slowdown. The rotation of the Earth has slowed down throughout time. A day was 18 hours and 41 minutes long approximately 1.4 billion years ago, while it was just 23 hours long during the Age of Dinosaurs.
An Earth day is now only 0.047 seconds longer than it was at the end of the Bronze Age due to that comparatively sluggish process. The revolution of the planet's liquid outer core, which is accelerating things, has caused the Earth to recently defy this pattern. According to a recent study that was just published this week in the journal Nature, climate change will probably cause the requirement to eliminate a leap second to be postponed until 2028 or 2029.
Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, said in a press statement, "Even a few years ago, the expectation was that leap seconds would always be positive, and happen more and more often. But if you look at changes in the Earth’s rotation, which is the reason for leap seconds, and break down what causes these changes, it looks like a negative one is quite likely. One second doesn't sound like much, but in today’s interconnected world, getting the time wrong could lead to huge problems."
Scientific American claims that if climate change hadn't occurred, scientists would have probably been required to remove a leap second much sooner. However, the need to make this historic choice has been postponed but not avoided due to ice caps warming.
Scientists have increased the clock by 27 leap seconds since 1972, sometimes with severe consequences. Concerns include website failures, tech service outages, glitches in airline reservation systems, volatility in the financial markets, and more. Google and Meta, for example, have developed a technique known as a "leap smear" that effectively distributes the extra second across the day. It is unclear what would occur if scientists subtract a leap second.
But it's most likely that this will be the only occasion in which humans erase a second from their clock. At the General Conference on Weights and Measures in November 2022, government delegates agreed to phase down leap seconds by 2035.
Latest Articles
