NASA-Funded Studies Explain How Climate Is Changing Earth’s Rotation

Faith & Science Conversation
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  • NASA-Funded Studies Explain How Climate Is Changing Earth’s Rotation
    • “Researchers used more than 120 years of data to decipher how melting ice, dwindling groundwater, and rising seas are nudging the planet’s spin axis and lengthening days.
      Days on Earth are growing slightly longer, and that change is accelerating. The reason is connected to the same mechanisms that also have caused the planet’s axis to meander by about 30 feet (10 meters) in the past 120 years. The findings come from two recent NASA-funded studies focused on how the climate-related redistribution of ice and water has affected Earth’s rotation.”
    • Admittedly, the content of the above article is “above my level”, but … The two reports cited in the article seem to suggest, IMO, challenges (a) to Young Earth Creationis and (b) Flat Earth pseudo-science.
    • Correct me if I’m wrong, but research that challenges Flat Earth Theory also challenges Young Earth Creationism, even though YECs will deny that is true, because they continue to deny interpretations of the Hebrew Bible that connect Hebrew Cosmology and Flat Earth Theory.
    • Concurrently, it seems to me, that the assertions in the article–that (a) melting ice, (b) groundwater reduction, and (c) rising seas are nudging the planet’s spin axis and lengthening days suggest that the global earth’s earliest polar rotation was different than what it is today, no? I would think that the speed of a global earth’s rotation on it’s axis and it’s revolution around the sun would have been greater in the beginning than they are now.
    • On the other hand, I may have no idea what I’m talking about.
  • The article above cites two NASA-funded studies:
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Interesting topic. Lengthening of the day would give more time for daily activities but we would have to live long to experience that benefit. The current speed of change is +1.3 milliseconds per century and it may reach up to +2.6 milliseconds per century, if we let the climate change progress as it has done.

These figures can be compared to Moon’s pulling effect that is lengthening the days with +2.4 milliseconds per century. These two together could increase the length of the day with up to +5 milliseconds per century.

5 milliseconds per century sounds ridiculously little but if the change would continue a million years, it would be +50 seconds per day, and if it would continue a billion years, the day would be almost 14 hours longer. That is unlikely to happen but it shows how a tiny change (5 milliseconds per century) can have a huge effect if the change continues long enough. Slow change gives time to adapt, so it is better than a rapid change.

Makes me wonder: if the day would be 14 hours longer, how many hours would a work day be?

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I just don’t know how I’ll fill my extra time.

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