Why melting ice sheets are making our days longer

illuminem summarizes for you the essential news of the day. Read the full piece on The Washington Post or enjoy below:

🗞️ Driving the news: The melting of Earth's ice sheets, driven by human-induced climate change, is causing our planet to rotate more slowly, resulting in slightly longer days and shifting Earth's axis of rotation

🔭 The context: Historically, Earth's rotation has been influenced mainly by lunar forces and internal processes
• Recent studies show that the rapid melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets since the early 2000s has accelerated the lengthening of days and altered Earth's axis

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: This change affects the precision of navigation systems and calculations for satellite launches, demonstrating the broader impacts of climate change beyond just temperature and sea level rise

⏭️ What's next: Scientists project that by 2100, days could lengthen by up to 2.62 milliseconds per century if greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically reduced, emphasizing the need for urgent climate action

💬 One quote: “Climate change is melting so much ice that we can see a huge impact on the very way how the planet is spinning,” said Surendra Adhikari, a geophysicist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

📈 One stat: Ice loss added time to Earth's day at a rate of 1.33 milliseconds per century since 2000

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