| Blogs > Adolpho > My Blog |
|
Climate Change Causing Earth to Tilt on its Axis From: Jacqueline Howard The position of Earth’s axis has dramatically shifted, likely because of melting ice sheets (fueled by climate change) and natural changes in water storage on land, according to a new study in the journal Science Advances. Erik Ivins, senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-author of the study published on Friday, told The Huffington Post that the movement of water on Earth’s surface affects the planet’s distribution of mass — and its axis — much like adding weight to a spinning top. “If you considered a spinning top, and then placed a piece of chewing gum on the top, it would start spinning around a new axis,” Ivins said in an email. “On the Earth, since water can be transported in and out of the oceans to the land — affecting global mean sea-levels — this also changes the moments of inertia, in exact analogy to the piece of chewing gum on a spinning top.” The shifting axis might add to the effects of climate change on our stressed-out planet: Global temperatures are getting hotter. Weather events are becoming more extreme. Sea levels are rising. Earth does not always spin on an axis running through its poles. Instead, it wobbles irregularly over time, drifting toward North America throughout most of the 20th Century (green arrow). That direction has changed drastically due to changes in water mass on Earth. Earth, as many of us remember from grade school, spins on an axis. This axis is an imaginary line that stretches through the center of the planet from the North Pole to the South Pole, and is tilted at an angle of around 23.5 degrees with respect to the orbital plane that includes the sun and Earth. Scientists have long known that Earth tends to wobble as it spins, causing its poles to drift slightly. However, a dramatic shift occurred around the year 2000, when the North Pole turned east. In an attempt to understand why, Ivins and his colleague Surendra Adhikari analyzed space geodetic and satellite gravimetric data from 2003 to 2015. This data allowed the researchers to unambiguously identify the causal mechanism for the Earth’s drifting poles after 2003. The researchers wrote in their study that the Earth’s spin axis has been shifting 75-degrees eastward from its normal long-term drift direction since the early 2000s. That shift, they found, is being driven not only by melting ice sheets, but also a loss of water mass in Eurasia due to the depletion of aquifers and drought, according to a NASA release. “This is the first time we have solid evidence that changes in land water distribution on a global scale also shift which direction the axis moves to,” Adhikari, lead author of the study, told New Scientist. Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona, who was not involved with the study, told The Guardian that “this highlights how real and profoundly large an impact humans are having on the planet.” While the findings are surprising, Ivins said, there is no need for alarm. The shift, he said, is relatively small, and there is no real chance that the amount of solar radiation reaching sensitive parts of Earth will increase. “What the shift does tell scientists,” Ivins said, “is that we have a new tool to probe past climate changes in a very quantitative and accurate way. To us, that is significant.” |
|||
|
I'm no scientist but if that is causing the global warming why is there all this alarm about carbon in the atmosphere, or do both play a part in it? Or is the carbon thing a made up thing for politicians to tax businesses more? Another question is if the poles shift what effect does it have on the CME radiation hitting the earth differently, perhaps with less shielding because of the angle, warming us or damaging life? Is that a factor? I have no idea. Judgment Day will be interesting - and all paths lead there.
| ||
|
The carbon in the atmosphere is bringing about global warming by acting as a blanket covering the earth. This global warming has then brought about melting of ice in polar regions. The melted ice (now sea water) affects the balance of earth by creating additional mass in regions previously exhibiting less mass. This increased mass in ocean regions and lower mass in polar regions and in glaciers in places such as Alaska, Glacier Natonal Park and others causes the earth to tilt on its axis. This tilting of earth on its axis causes some regions to experience still greater effects of global warming. I hope my explanation answers your questions. Judgment Day will be interesting - and all paths lead there.
|
×
×