Melting ice sheets are changing the Earth's rotation

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Legion Troll

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Melting ice sheets are changing the Earth's rotation, a new study has found.

In the past, experts have considered the melting of Greenland's ice sheet as a strong factor in Earth's rotation shift.

However, in a new study by NASA, experts have also included Antarctica's melting ice sheets and modifications in the planet's hydrology.

While the Earth continues to move in its axis from west to east and is rotating every 24 hours, the axis itself is moving.

As mass is distributed within a rotating object like the Earth, the way it spins also changes.

Greenland is depleting about 287 billion metric tons of ice annually, while Antarctica loses 134 billion metric tons.

The study was published in the journal Science Advances on April 8.

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http://www.techtimes.com/articles/148693/20160410/melting-ice-sheets-changes-in-water-on-land-changing-earths-rotation.htm
 
Leonthecat said:
I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING AT THIS PICTURE! PRICELESS!
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I expect Tubby Tommy will start a denial thread any time now.

One of the most important implications of this work is in testing climate change models, looking back at decades of data to see whether dramatic changes such as the loss of Greenland’s ice sheet are likely to be natural phenomena or human-induced.

"Study of Earth’s rotation is one of the oldest scientific endeavors known to mankind," says the project’s principal investigator Erik Ivins of California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

As astronomers tracked the stars, and the decades accumulated mountains of data, certain wobbles of the Earth became apparent – the Chandler wobble, for example, which takes 433 days to move the north pole of the axis by 20 feet.

But other shifts in the rotational axis do not follow a regular pattern, some being linked instead to the loss of ice sheets.

The North rotational pole, for example, has moved toward Hudson Bay, Canada, during the 20th century. Scientists link this long-term motion to the collapse of the Laurentide ice sheet in North America and the subsequent mass deficit in the region.

"What became obvious after about 50 years of this data collection – and now we have over 100 years of data – is that we see there's a near decadal wobble, too," says Dr. Ivins. "Both the decadal oscillation and the development of the uniform motion towards Labrador has changed completely because of the tremendous amount of ice lost from Greenland, and also Antarctica."

Since the year 2000, there has been a dramatic 75-degree shift in direction of the polar drift, which most scientists have attributed solely to the loss of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

"One of the important things underlying this work is that we have a satellite system that’s been operating for 15 years that can detect any change of mass in the oceans, ice sheets and Earth's water in general," says Ivins, referring to NASA’s GRACE mission.

Using this new data, the scientists were also able to show that changes in terrestrial water storage may be intimately connected to the decadal swings in Earth's rotational axis.

"We can now view this dataset as a gold mine to test climate change models," says Ivins.


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http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0408/Is-climate-change-making-the-Earth-s-axis-tilt
 
dnews-files-2016-04-PolarMotionShift_160410-670-jpg.jpg



Ice melting has caused a drift in polar motion, a somewhat esoteric term that tells scientists a lot about past and future climate and is crucial in GPS calculations and satellite communication.

Polar motion refers to the periodic wobble and drift of the poles. It’s been observed for more than 130 years, but the process has been going on for eons driven by mass shifts inside the earth as well as ones on the surface.

For decades, the north pole had been slowly drifting toward Canada, but there was a shift in the drift about 15 years ago. Now it’s headed almost directly down the Greenwich Meridian.

Like many other natural processes large and small, from sea levels to wildfires, climate change is also playing a role in this shift.

“Since about 2000, there has been a dramatic shift in this general direction,” Surendra Adhikari, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said. “It is due to climate change without a doubt. It’s related to ice sheets, in particular the Greenland ice sheet.”

Melting ice explains about 66 percent of the change in the shift of the Earth’s spin axis, particularly the rapid losses occurring in Greenland.



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http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/climate-change-is-altering-how-the-poles-drift-160410.htm
 
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