How can global warming make days longer?

2024-04-14 2024-04-14T11:09:22Z

Arabia Weather - Climate change is showing its multiple effects on our planet, including an increase in the length of days as a result of the Earth's slowing down. When the polar ice caps melt, the Earth's rotation slows down slightly, which leads to a slight increase in the length of days as well.

Studies indicate that climate change affects how we measure time, as this could cause problems in navigation and communications techniques that depend on time accuracy. Professor Duncan Agnew, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, points out that the melting polar ice has a similar effect to that of a spinning skier. on the ice; The spread of water over the ocean causes a transfer of the Earth's angular momentum and a slowdown in its rotation.

In addition, the increasing speed of polar ice melt contrasts with the acceleration the Earth has experienced in recent years, indicating multiple and complex impacts of climate change on our Earth system.

Why aren't the days always the same length?

Although we envision the Earth as a perfect sphere, in reality it tends not to be so as the Earth also varies in its composition, as it has different layers from solid to liquid, and each layer has its effect on the movement of the Earth, and this means that today it cannot It is always the same length, and its duration can vary slightly from another day.

There are many reasons for this difference, from earthquakes to the shifting of continents, and the Sun and Moon also affect the shape of the Earth.

Over millions of years, this friction has slowed the Earth's rotation. However, in recent decades, things have accelerated and we witnessed an exceptionally short day on June 29, 2022, a day that was shortened by about 1.59 milliseconds.

This simple change represents an increasing challenge for computers and technology around the world, as it can affect the accuracy of time and timing in complex computer systems.

The effect of time changes on Earth's movement

In the relatively recent past, time was a direct estimate of the Earth's motion as scientists relied a second on how much the planet rotated on its axis to divide a day into 86,400 seconds.

With the advancement of atomic clocks in the 1950s, this concept changed, and the definition of the second became based on the relative stability of cesium atoms, which is one second that the best atomic clocks lose only every 10 million years.

When International Atomic Time was introduced in 1958, it was adjusted to be compatible with Universal Time based on the Earth’s rotation, which required adding 27 “leap” seconds over time to make the two systems compatible.

Although we may not notice these leap seconds, they pose a challenge to time-based systems, and have caused major technical problems, and applications such as Twitter and operating systems have crashed. Due to the addition of a leap second in 2015.

We face greater challenges with the current acceleration of the Earth's movement, as we must deduct a second from Universal Time to align it with International Atomic Time.

The need to include a negative leap second by 2029 portends unprecedented problems, and raises questions about eliminating leap seconds altogether. This scenario, projected to 2035, would require radical changes in time adjustments and rule adjustments.

In the long term, factors such as tides and melting ice will continue to slow the Earth's motion. According to previous data, it is unlikely that acceleration will continue to increase at a rate sufficient to cope with this, making negative leap seconds rare, although they are not a major problem in climate change. , it highlights one of our impacts on Earth.