Global warming has shifted the axis of the Earth: how it threatens humanity - ForumDaily
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Global warming has shifted the axis of the Earth: how it threatens humanity

Research has shown that massive glacier melting as a result of global warming has caused noticeable shifts in the Earth's axis of rotation since the 1990s. According to scientists, this demonstrates the huge impact that humans have on the planet. Writes about it The Guardian.

Photo: Shutterstock

A planet's geographic north and south poles are the point at which its axis of rotation intersects the surface, but they are not fixed. Changes in how the Earth's mass is distributed around the planet cause the axis and therefore the poles to move.

In the past, only natural factors such as ocean currents and hot rocks in the Earth's interior contributed to the pole shift. But new research shows that since the 1990s, the melting of hundreds of billions of tons of ice per year as a result of the climate crisis has pushed the poles in new directions.

Scientists found that the direction of the polar pole shifted from south to east in 1995, and that the average speed from 1995 to 2020 was 17 times higher than from 1981 to 1995.

Since 1980, the position of the poles has shifted by about 4 meters.

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“The accelerated decline in land water supplies due to melting glaciers is the main driving force behind the pole shift since the 1990s,” concluded the team led by Shanshan Deng of the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Gravimetric data from the Grace satellite, launched in 2002, was used to link melting glaciers with pole movements in 2005 and 2012. But the scientists' study breaks new ground by extending communications before the satellite launch and showing that human activity began reversing the poles in the 1990s—almost three decades ago.

The study found that glacial losses caused most of the shift, but it is likely that groundwater pumping also contributed to the movement.

Groundwater is stored underground, but after being pumped out for drinking or agriculture, much of it eventually ends up in the sea, redistributing its weight around the world. Over the past 50 years, mankind has pumped out 18 trillion tons of water from deep underground non-renewable reservoirs.

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Vincent Humphrey of the University of Zurich, who was not involved in the study, said it showed how human activity had redistributed huge amounts of water around the planet: "This tells us how large this change in mass is - it is so large that it could change the Earth's axis." However, according to him, the movement of the Earth's axis is not large enough to affect everyday life: it can change the length of the day, but only by milliseconds.

Professor Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona said the changes in the Earth's axis highlighted "how real and profound the impact of humans on the planet is."

Some scientists argue that the scale of this impact means that it is necessary to declare a new geological era - the Anthropocene. Since the mid-20th century, there has been a marked acceleration in carbon dioxide emissions and sea level rise, destruction of wildlife, and land conversion through agriculture and deforestation.

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