Climate Change Impacts on Earth’s Rotation

A 24-hour day seems like a constant, but a day has slowly been getting longer. A day was less than 19 hours long 1.4 billion years ago and was only 23 hours long when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Natural events such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tides and wind patterns can affect how fast or slow the world turns.

Recently, scientists observed that the dynamics of the Earth’s liquid outer core were causing the planet to speed its rotation, suggesting that we might need to delete a second of time from our clocks for the first time ever. In our highly connected world that relies on precise timekeeping, losing a second could lead to unforeseen complications. However, a new study in the journal Nature concludes that the redistribution of water caused by the melting polar ice caps caused by climate change will delay the need to delete a second from the clock to 2028 or 2029.