Climate change is a concern for several areas of nature, whether due to the destruction of the ocean due to pollution, or the high consumption of fossil fuels. But apparently climate may be even more crucial than we thought.
A new study, published in the journal Nature, a team of geophysicists discovered that melting polar ice can change the length of time on Earth. Polar areas are one of the regions on the planet most vulnerable to global warming.
To maintain the accuracy of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), humanity uses 450 ultra-precise atomic clocks that were first set in 1969. The other most common method is accomplished by timing the Earth’s rotation; although, Because this rotation fluctuates, 27 ‘leap seconds’ were added to maintain the official time standard.
As scientists explain, global warming is causing ice to melt in Greenland and Antarctica, which in turn could impact the speed of Earth’s rotation and lengthen the length of a day. Fortunately, the team claims that this impact is imperceptible to humans — that is, for now there is no way to feel the change in everyday life.
“The historical association of time with the Earth’s rotation has caused Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to closely follow this rotation. Because the rotation rate is not constant, UTC contains discontinuities (leap seconds), which makes it difficult to use in computer networks. Since 1972, all UTC discontinuities have required the addition of a leap second. Here we show that increased ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica, measured by satellite gravity, slowed Earth’s angular velocity more quickly than before,” the study describes.
The length of time and the melting of ice
According to geophysicist Duncan Agnew, from the University of California, San Diego, with the current rate of melting, it will not be necessary to add a ‘leap second’ scheduled for 2026 in order to ensure that time keeps up with the Earth’s rotation. Thus, a ‘leap second’ would only be implemented in 2029.
The leap second system began to be used in the 1970s; polar melting also increases the chances of adding more leap seconds in the future.Source: Getty Images
Official timekeeping is considered an extremely important area; even just a ‘leap second’ delay can affect communication networks, the internet, financial markets, among others. The addition of a ‘leap second’ is performed from time to time due to the Earth’s slightly inconstant rotation.
“Extrapolating trends for the core and other phenomena relevant to predicting Earth’s future orientation shows that UTC, as defined now, will require a negative discontinuity by 2029. This will pose an unprecedented problem for computer network time and may require changes to UTC are made sooner than planned. If polar ice melt had not accelerated recently, this problem would have occurred 3 years earlier: global warming is already affecting global timing,” the article describes.
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