Climate change should change timekeeping

As it is no secret to anyone, every second, the Earth is suffering from climate change, such as global warming. Now, this danger to the planet and humanity could affect something vital to our lives: global timekeeping.

The problem will affect absolutely everything, from computers in general to the financial market – unless we do something.

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Earth, climate change and their implication in timekeeping

• The system we currently use to measure time is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC);
• It ensures that the world’s time measurement is consistent and standardized to facilitate communication, navigation, scientific research, commerce and everything else that surrounds us;
• UTC is calculated from around 450 atomic clocks. They are super-precise and use ultra-stable “vibrations” of atoms to measure time, but it doesn’t align with astronomical time, which is based on the Earth’s rotation;
• Its rotation is a few milliseconds higher than a day defined by atomic clocks, and the rotation speed of our planet varies thanks to several factors;
• To compensate for the situation, so-called leap seconds are added to UTC every few years to ensure its synchronization with astronomical time;
• For example, the IFLScience recalls that strange and even unknown changes in the Earth’s predominantly liquid core and solid mantle have accelerated its rotation in recent decades, which was explained with the addition of leap seconds.

The problem is that more disturbances are emerging, which could increasingly interfere with the Earth’s rotation speed and create chaos in global timekeeping.

Duncan Carr Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, studied the planet’s rotation and how it is being impacted by the melting of polar ice caps.

Climate change has been causing a lot of damage to our planet and our existence. One of the main negative changes is related to the melting of the polar ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica.

The way they are melting, in addition to increasing the level of the oceans, is also changing the shape of the Earth and its angular velocity faster than before.

Agnew believes that, thanks to the slowdown in Earth’s rotation, UTC will need to receive a negative leap second (a minute that, instead of having 60 seconds, has 59) in mid-2029. He published his study in Nature.

Until a few years ago, the expectation was that leap seconds would always be positive and would happen more and more frequently. But if you look at the changes in the Earth’s rotation, leap second ratio, and analyze what causes these changes, it seems that a negative change is quite likely. One second doesn’t seem like much, but in today’s interconnected world, getting the time wrong can lead to huge problems.

Duncan Carr Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, in a statement

Regardless of climate change, it’s possible that changes in Earth’s liquid core may have required a negative leap second until 2026. But Agnew’s calculations show that changes in polar ice mass delayed the addition by up to three years, going until 2029. In other words: climate change is already affecting global timekeeping.

Risks of not adding the negative leap second

If the negative leap second is not added, global timekeeping could become desynchronized, which would cause major interruptions in computer and telecommunications systems (remember the famous Millennium Bug that scared everyone in 2000? Well… like this time, it may not just be a scare that didn’t materialize).

A negative leap second has never been added or tested, so the problems it could create are unprecedented. Metrologists from around the world are closely monitoring the development of the discussion, with the aim of avoiding any unnecessary risks.

Dr. Patrizia Tavella, Director of the Time Department at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, in an article about the study

Tavella also commented that the task of inserting the negative leap second – and coordinating the effort at a global level – would be “formidable”.