{"id":141078,"date":"2021-04-28T16:18:46","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T16:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=2a24d68b1dcd62fc4e77da6f22dcb664"},"modified":"2021-04-28T16:18:46","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T16:18:46","slug":"climate-crisis-has-shifted-the-earths-axis-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/04\/28\/climate-crisis-has-shifted-the-earths-axis-study-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Crisis Has Shifted the Earth\u2019s Axis, Study Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/climate-crisis-has-shifted-the-earths-axis-study-shows\/\"><img width=\"200\" height=\"133\" src=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/2021_0428-earth-200x133.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"The Earth, as seen from space\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/2021_0428-earth-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/2021_0428-earth-400x266.jpg 400w, https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/2021_0428-earth-1200x799.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/2021_0428-earth-800x532.jpg 800w, https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/2021_0428-earth-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/2021_0428-earth-2048x1363.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/2021_0428-earth.jpg 2400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><aside class=\"introtext\">This story originally appeared in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2021\/apr\/23\/climate-crisis-has-shifted-the-earths-axis-study-shows\"><em>The Guardian<\/em><\/a> and is republished here as part of <span class=\"il\">Covering<\/span> <span class=\"il\">Climate<\/span> <span class=\"il\">Now<\/span>, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the <span class=\"il\">climate<\/span> story.<\/aside>\n<aside>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">The massive melting of glaciers as a result of global heating has caused marked shifts in the Earth\u2019s axis of rotation since the 1990s, research has shown. It demonstrates the profound impact humans are having on the planet, scientists said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">The planet\u2019s geographic north and south poles are the point where its axis of rotation intersects the surface, but they are not fixed. Changes in how the Earth\u2019s mass is distributed around the planet cause the axis, and therefore the poles, to move.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">In the past, only natural factors such as ocean currents and the convection of hot rock in the deep Earth contributed to the drifting position of the poles. But the new research shows that since the 1990s, the loss of hundreds of billions of tonnes of ice a year into the oceans resulting from the climate crisis has caused the poles to move in new directions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">The scientists found the direction of polar drift shifted from southward to eastward in 1995 and that the average speed of drift from 1995 to 2020 was 17 times faster than from 1981 to 1995.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">Since 1980, the position of the poles has moved about 4 metres in distance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">\u201cThe accelerated decline [in water stored on land] resulting from glacial ice melting is the main driver of the rapid polar drift after the 1990s,\u201d concluded the team, led by Shanshan Deng, from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">Gravity data from the Grace satellite, launched in 2002, had been used to link glacial melting to<span> <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/grl.50552\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">movements of the pole in 2005<\/a><span> <\/span>and<span> <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2016\/apr\/09\/melting-ice-sheets-changing-the-way-the-earth-wobbles-on-its-axis-says-nasa\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">2012<\/a>, both following increases in ice losses. But Deng\u2019s research breaks new ground by extending the link to before the satellite\u2019s launch, showing human activities have been shifting the poles since the 1990s, almost three decades ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">The research,<span> <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1029\/2020GL092114\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters<\/a>, showed glacial losses accounted for most of the shift, but it is likely that the pumping up of groundwater also contributed to the movements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">Groundwater is stored under land but, once pumped up for drinking or agriculture, most eventually flows to sea, redistributing its weight around the world. In the past 50 years, humanity has removed<span> <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2012\/may\/20\/world-aquifers-rising-sea-levels\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">18 trillion tonnes of water from deep underground reservoirs<\/a><span> <\/span>without it being replaced.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">Vincent Humphrey, at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and not involved in the new research said it showed how human activities have redistributed huge amounts of water around the planet: \u201cIt tells you how strong this mass change is &#8212; it\u2019s so big that it can change the axis of the Earth.\u201d However, the movement of the Earth\u2019s axis is not large enough to affect daily life, he said: it could change the length of a day, but only by milliseconds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">Prof Jonathan Overpeck, at the University of Arizona, US,<span> <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2016\/apr\/09\/melting-ice-sheets-changing-the-way-the-earth-wobbles-on-its-axis-says-nasa\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">told the <em>Guardian<\/em> previously<\/a><span> <\/span>that changes to the Earth\u2019s axis highlighted \u201chow real and profoundly large an impact humans are having on the planet\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1yqigsj\">Some scientists argue that the scale of this impact means a<span> <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2016\/aug\/29\/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">new geological epoch &#8212; the Anthropocene<\/a><span> <\/span>&#8212; needs to be declared. Since the mid-20th century, there has been a marked acceleration of carbon dioxide emissions and sea level rise, the destruction of wildlife and the transformation of land by farming, deforestation and development.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/climate-crisis-has-shifted-the-earths-axis-study-shows\/\">Latest \u2013 Truthout<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/climate-crisis-has-shifted-the-earths-axis-study-shows\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"133\" src=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/2021_0428-earth-200x133.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"The Earth, as seen from space\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-summary\">Since 1980 the position of the poles has moved about four meters, largely due to massive glacier melt after the &#8217;90s.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1187,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21285,774,5605,21286,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1187"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141079,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141078\/revisions\/141079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}