The ice in the polar zone is melting and changing the rotation of the Earth. People will lose time of their lives in the coming years

One day, in the next two years, everyone on the globe will lose a second of their time. Exactly when that will happen is influenced by humans, according to a new study, as melting polar ice alters Earth’s rotation and changes time itself, reports CNN.

The hours and minutes that dictate our days are determined by the rotation of the Earth, but this rotation is not constant and can change slightly depending on what is happening on the surface of the Earth and in its molten core. These almost imperceptible changes occasionally mean that the world’s clocks need to be adjusted by a “leap second”, which may seem small but can have a big impact on computing systems.

Earth’s rotation is now accelerating

Lots of seconds have been added over the years, but after a long slowing trend, the Earth’s rotation is now speeding up. For the first time, a split second will have to be taken out.

“A negative second has never been added or tested, so the problems it could create are unprecedented,” explained one researcher.

Exactly when this will happen is influenced by global warming, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Melting polar ice is slowing the impact on Earth’s rotation and has pushed the date back three years, pushing it from 2026 to 2029.

“Part of figuring out what’s going to happen in global timing depends on understanding what’s going on with the effect of global warming,” said Duncan Agnew, a professor of geophysics at the University of California, San Diego and an author of the study.

Before 1955, a second was defined as a specific fraction of the time it took the Earth to rotate once relative to the stars, then came the age of highly accurate atomic clocks, which proved to be a much more stable way of to define a physical second.

Since the late 1960s, the world has started using Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to establish time zones. UTC is based on atomic clocks but still keeps pace with the planet’s rotation, but because the rotation rate is not constant, the two time frames slowly diverge. This means that a “leap second” must be added every now and then to bring them back into alignment.

Changes in Earth’s long-term rotation were dominated by tidal friction on the ocean floor, which slowed its rotation. Recently, the impact of melting polar ice, driven by humans burning fossil fuels that warm the planet, has become a significant factor. As the ice melts in the ocean, water moves from the poles to the equator, which further slows the Earth’s rotation speed.

The process, compared to a skater

Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved in the study, describes the process as a figure skater spinning with his arms overhead. As they bring their arms down to their shoulders, their rotation slows.

The melting of polar ice “was large enough to visibly affect the rotation of the entire Earth in an unprecedented way.”

“To me, the fact that human beings caused the Earth’s rotation to change is amazing,” another expert added.

But while melting ice can slow Earth’s rotation, there’s another factor at play when it comes to global timekeeping, according to the report: processes in the Earth’s core.

The planet’s liquid core rotates independently of its solid outer shell. If the core slows down, the solid shell accelerates to maintain momentum, and that’s what’s happening right now.

Despite the melting of the polar ice, which exerts a slow influence, in general the rotation of the Earth is speeding up. That means the world will soon have to drop a second for the first time.

“No one really anticipated that the Earth would accelerate to the point where we would have to eliminate a leap second,” another researcher said.

Publisher: BC

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