‘Unprecedented in the past 3.6 million years’: How human-made climate change is making days longer

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illuminem summarises for you the essential news of the day. Read the full piece on The Wall Street Journal or enjoy below:

🗞️ Driving the news: New research finds that human-driven climate change is slowing Earth’s rotation and lengthening the duration of a day at a rate unprecedented in at least 3.6 million years

🔭 The context: As polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers melt, water redistributes from the poles toward the equator, subtly altering the planet’s mass distribution and slowing its spin
• Scientists compared the effect to a figure skater extending their arms, which reduces rotational speed
• The study shows that from 2000 to 2020, climate-related factors lengthened the day by 1.33 milliseconds per century, a pace not seen in millions of years

🌍 Why it matters: Although the changes are extremely small, they illustrate how profoundly human activity is altering planetary systems
• The shift is expected to grow stronger as ice melt accelerates and sea levels rise
• Systems such as GPS, satellite navigation and space operations depend on atomic clocks, meaning even millisecond-level changes can create complications for modern technologies

⏭️ What’s next: If greenhouse gas emissions continue to drive warming, climate change could become a stronger influence on Earth’s rotation than the moon’s tidal effects by the end of the century
• Scientists say the phenomenon will remain imperceptible to humans but increasingly relevant for timekeeping and technological infrastructure
• The findings also reinforce how global warming is reshaping Earth systems in ways that extend far beyond temperature and sea-level rise

📈 One stat: Climate change could lengthen the duration of a day by 2.62 milliseconds by the end of the century if current warming trends continue

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