According to a study, climate change has slowed Earth’s rotation and could affect timekeeping | Current Affairs | Vision IAS
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    According to a study, climate change has slowed Earth’s rotation and could affect timekeeping

    Posted 30 Apr 2024

    2 min read

    • Earth rotates on its axis relative to the Sun every 24 hours mean solar time, with an inclination of 23.45 degrees from the plane of its orbit around the Sun. 

     

    • Earth’s rotation is affected by three major geophysical processes - 
      • Tidal dissipation: Friction between ocean water and the sea floor — both in shallow seas and in deep-ocean — has progressively slowed Earth’s rotation. 
      • Earth’s core: Changes in the flow of currents in the molten outer core affecting its spin.
      • Glacial melt: As polar glaciers melt, the water mass gets redistributed throughout the oceans, pooling most noticeably around the equator. 
        • It changes the shape of Earth, making it flatter and slows down its rotation speed. 

     

    • Findings of the study: 
      • Earth’s rotation is speeding up in recent years due to changes in its core, however, melting of polar ice mass due to climate change have decelerated such speeding up. 
      • To keep clocks in sync with the Earth’s rotation, speeding up of Earth’s rotation would have necessitated addition of a negative leap second in two years’ time.
        • However, climate change has delayed such addition by another three years, to 2029. 

     

    About Leap Second

    • Historically, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is followed as time standard, in which a day lasts 86,400 seconds (24 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds).
      • However, average length of a day depends on Earth’s rotation speed. 
    • In case of fluctuations in Earth’s rotation speed, leap seconds are added to UTC. 
      • A negative leap second is subtracted in case of slowing of Earth’s rotation while a positive leap second is added to compensate for speeding up of Earth’s rotation. 
    • Tags :
    • Climate change
    • Earth's Rotation
    • Time keeping

    Articles Sources

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-warming-is-slowing-the-earths-rotation/
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