Climate change and polar ice melting could be impacting the length of Earth's day

Humanity is rapidly waking up to the fact that time is running out to take action to mitigate the effects of climate change. Ironically, climate change itself, primarily caused by the release of greenhouse gases via the burning of fossil fuels, could help delay a time-related crisis.. But because Earth's rotation fluctuates, since 1972, the alignment between these two measurements has been maintained by adding 27"leap seconds" to the official time standard.

"A negative leap second has never been added or tested, so the problems it could create are without precedent," Patrizia Tavella, meteorologist in the Time Department of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures , wrote regarding the recent research in an accompanyingTavella thinks that pushing back the need for a negative leap second from 2026 to 2029 could help meteorologists better calculate Earth's rotation.

In the past, this core-mantle coupling has led to an increase in Earth's rotational period of 6 millionths of a second per year. While this rate slowing might seem trivially small it is really felt by atomic clocks.

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