Global warming is not solely about wildfires or melting glaciers. Scientists worldwide continually study the impact of the climate crisis on various aspects of life. They aim to uncover the real effects of rising Earth temperatures, operating under the assumption that humanity is largely unaware of the gravity of the situation.

Researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have investigated the impact of the climate crisis on the length of the day. They found that rising temperatures are lengthening the day, potentially leading to disastrous consequences for GPS systems, the internet, and banking, all of which rely on precise timing. Although the current change is only a few milliseconds, this could already affect money transfers, potentially causing delays until the next day.

The Guardian explains: "The length of the Earth’s day has been steadily increasing over geological time due to the gravitational drag of the moon on the planet’s oceans and land. However, the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets due to human-caused global heating has been redistributing water stored at high latitudes into the world’s oceans, leading to more water in the seas nearer the equator. This makes the Earth more oblate – or fatter – slowing the planet's rotation and lengthening the day further.

The planetary impact of humanity was also demonstrated recently by research that showed the redistribution of water had caused the Earth’s axis of rotation – the north and south poles – to move. Other work has revealed that humanity’s carbon emissions are shrinking the stratosphere."

"We can see our impact as humans on the whole Earth system, not just locally, like the rise in temperature, but really fundamentally, altering how it moves in space and rotates. Due to our carbon emissions, we have done this in just 100 or 200 years. Whereas the governing processes previously had been going on for billions of years, and that is striking. All the data centres that run the internet, communications and financial transactions are based on precise timing. We also need precise knowledge of time for navigation, particularly for satellites and spacecraft," Benedikt Soja from ETH Zurich explains in an interview with The Guardian.

The researchers' findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. For their measurements, they used observations and computer reconstructions to investigate the effect of melting ice on day length.

"This present-day rate is likely higher than at any time in the past few thousand years," the researchers said. "It is projected to remain approximately at a level of 1.0 ms/cy for the next few decades, even if greenhouse gas emissions are severely curbed."

Dr Santiago Belda of the University of Alicante in Spain, who was not part of the research team, said in an interview with The Guardian: "This study is a great advance because it confirms that the worrying loss of ice that Greenland and Antarctica are suffering has a direct impact on day length, causing our days to lengthen. This variation in day length has critical implications not only for how we measure time but also for GPS and other technologies that govern our modern lives."

Source: The Guardian