Climate change is making the days longer, which could disrupt online banking.
There is a rather outdated joke in which a man goes to the doctor, and the doctor recommends that he quit smoking, drinking, eating red meat… The man, worried, asks the doctor if he will live longer this way, and the doctor replies: I don’t know if you will live longer, but it will be a long time. It’s a bad joke, but it is perfect for the topic. New study suggests climate change is making days longer. And no doubt the heat may make us, like the joke’s protagonist, feel like time is moving more slowly, but what this study says goes further. The days are getting longer, and this could have serious implications for many technological devices.
It sounds like the apocalypse, but it’s not that bad, especially because now that we know, we can fix it. The thing is, many devices have extremely accurate internal clocks based on atomic clocks. Some people need this time factor to make calculations and if it is not adjusted, they may fail. A prime example is GPS technology, but in general it also affects financial transactions or internet traffic. Now the risk is obvious, but how is it possible that climate change will extend our days? The key is in the skaters.
Climate change is characterized, among other things, by an increase in average global temperature. It is clear to society that its main consequence is the melting of the polar caps. As temperatures rise, the ice melts and parts of the planet that were permanently covered in white are now exposed, revealing the darker surface of the Earth, which retains even more heat and therefore increases warming by melting more ice and returning to the cycle. The thing is that the ice that melts does not stay there at the poles.
Due to the rotation of the Earth, water tends to move towards the equator, where it concentrates. In other words, there is more water in the equatorial seas now than there was a few decades ago. We can imagine the effect a little bit if we throw a wet tennis ball with a certain effect: we will see water being thrown out, but not everywhere, mostly around the equator of the ball. The Earth is massive enough that the water cannot escape into space, but remember that, after all, our planet is spinning at 1,000 mph. That’s why the days are slowing down: how your mass distribution changes. When a rotating object moves mass away from its axis, its rotational speed decreases. This is a typical example of a skater who, when he spins on himself and puts his arms across his body, spins faster, but if he crosses them out, he spins slower. The same thing is happening to the Earth now, as more and more water is moving away from its poles (close to the axis of rotation) to travel towards the equator, which is 6,384 km away.
Now that it’s clear that the slowdown is slowing, the question is how much. And as these scientists have been able to measure, the rate at which the days are lengthening is so tiny that we won’t notice any difference. We’re talking about a few milliseconds every hundred years. Namely: 1.3 milliseconds every century at the same rate as since 2000.
“The current rate is likely higher than at any time in the last few thousand years,” the researchers say. “It is projected to remain at about 1.0 milliseconds per century over the next few decades, even if greenhouse gas emissions are significantly reduced.” In fact, if we don’t stop greenhouse gas emissions in time, they are expected to increase by 2 milliseconds per century.
UNKNOWN:
- In fact, the Earth was already slowing its day due to the gravitational pull of the Moon. In fact, the Moon continues to be the biggest drag on the Earth’s rotation, but if we continue at this rate, within three-quarters of a century, global warming could surpass our satellite as the primary cause of longer days.
REFERENCES (MLA):
- Kiani Shahvandi M., Adhikari S., Damberry M., et al. Contributions of core, mantle, and climatological processes to the Earth’s polar motion. Nat. 17, 705–710 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01478-2