The BBC wants this to be all about the climate, but the study is also pushing the propaganda boat out a long way by claiming that ‘we’ are the cause. It’s known that the Earth’s rotation isn’t constant. ‘In 2022 the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), the organization responsible for global timekeeping, voted to abolish leap seconds by 2035. How this new research could impact such a decision remains to be seen.’ Source – Scientific American, which also has this:
“Despite our perceptions as humans, the Earth is not a perfect timekeeper,” says Harvard University geophysicist Jerry X. Mitrovica, who reviewed the new study and co-wrote a commentary on it for Nature. He says these findings highlight the divide between our lived experience and the technology that surrounds us. “How do we handle that divide?” he says. “Do we continue to address this divide by adding or subtracting seconds from our definition of a day, or do we accept this irregular difference as normal and give up the bother of continuously correcting?” — If it’s normal, the human causation argument looks even weaker.
– – –
Climate change is affecting the speed of the Earth’s rotation and could impact how we keep time, a study says.
Accelerating melt from Greenland and Antarctica is adding extra water to the world’s seas, redistributing mass, reports BBC News.
That is very slightly slowing the Earth’s rotation. But the planet is still spinning faster than it used to.
The effect is that global timekeepers may need to subtract a second from our clocks later than would otherwise have been the case.
“Global warming is already affecting global timekeeping,” says the study, published in the journal Nature.
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) – which is used by most of the world to regulate clocks and time – is calculated by the Earth’s rotation.
But the Earth’s rotation rate is not constant and can therefore have an effect on how long our days and nights are.
As a result, since the 1970s around 27 seconds – known as leap seconds – have been added on to keep our time accurate.
The study finds that a “negative leap second” – subtracting a second from world clocks – would have been needed in 2026 without accelerating polar ice melt.
But now, with ice sheets losing mass five times faster than they were 30 years ago, this change is needed in 2029, the study suggests.
“It’s kind of impressive, even to me, we’ve done something that measurably changes how fast the Earth rotates,” Duncan Agnew, the author of the study, told NBC News. [Talkshop comment – ‘we’?]
Full report here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
The earth had a constant rotation before the climate started changing? Maybe changing climate is a result of the earth’s rotation. Or something.
Even the sun doesn’t have a constant rotation rate at its equator, so why should the Earth?
Long-Term Variations in the Solar Differential Rotation
The Sun’s mean (over all the concerned cycles during 1879–1975) equatorial rotation rate (A) is significantly larger (≈0.1%) in the odd-numbered sunspot cycles (ONSCs) than in the even-numbered sunspot cycles (ENSCs).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1022912430585
See also: The earth’s variable rate of rotation: a discussion of some meterological and oceanic causes and consequences
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsta.1977.0025
The gravitational drag of our Moon slows down Earth’s rotation. Agreed?
Ice accumulating at the poles speeds up Earth’s rotation. Agreed?
AGW is simply “climate change” and media spin. Agreed?
Weather cyclones etc affect the Earth’s spin? In your dreams!
What’s this melting? trivial volumes, trivial mass. Nothing from Antarctica for decades . Greenland a dribble.
According to Spolter’s analysis, the rotation rate of a body is the square-root of the product of the body’s radius at the equator, and that body’s gravitational acceleration, retarded by the drag imposed by the heaviness of the body. The gravitational acceleration is established by the gravitational force of the Sun divided by the body’s area. The gravitational force of the Sun is constant throughout the solar system, implying that it is sourced from some unexplained field within the galactic arm. Since these parameters are dynamic and in flux, they will always vary.
All mensuration is tied to the Earth’s rotation rate, and its physical dimensions. We went to an adjusted calendar centuries ago to account for the differences between mathematical and celestial motion. So what’s wrong with doing the same using atomic decay? It’s not constant either. Climate changes have no significant impact upon the systems of measure since they’re all a product of dynamic forces in a hierarchy of forces. It’s all relative anyway.
Chicken Littles.
I’d bet tectonic movements are redistributing mass at a far faster rate. The entire mass of every continent is in a slightly different position now than 50 years ago.
Arctic melting was offset to some extent by new snowfall, even in the ‘hottest year since’…whenever.
Winter snow accumulation was above average this year, but the Greenland Ice Sheet still lost 156 ± 22 Gt of mass from 1 September 2022 to 31 August 2023 because discharge and melting exceeded accumulation.
https://arctic.noaa.gov/report-card/report-card-2023/greenland-ice-sheet-2023/
Yes, Phoenix, “I’d bet tectonic movements are redistributing mass at a far faster rate. The entire mass of every continent is in a slightly different position now than 50 years ago.”
I seem to remember an earthquake gave rise to a measurable change to Earth’s rotation some years back. However, the big external forces are gravity (solar bodies and maybe “Más Allá”). All result in oceanic drag (and maybe core and mantle plastic drag). All slow down rotation with time. So what if anything can speed up rotation? Mass moving to the poles? Earth core and crust rotating at different speeds? Earth as a planet actually cooling and contracting? In comparison to these real possibilities do you consider atmospheric chaos of any significance?
Why is every discussion about changes on Earth at planetary scale conducted on such an inconsequentila scale. What messes are involved and how do they cmpare to 6 x 10^24 Kg. It really is the case that small change in mass distribution WILL make a difference an acedemic might measure with a very expensive instrument somebody created because there were taxpayer funded academics with a budget to buy one. I worked for such a company in Princeton. But surely the real question Is if that change has any real, measurable, practical AKA empirical implications for the people paying for this information? Yes there are. They are being made pointlessly poorer. No other real effect. That includes the BBC licence fee.
PS The Rance barrage slowed the World. Nobody complained when Francois Onion did it. It was a worth while project, but there are not many Rance Estaries, and nuclear was much better value and available on the grid where f needed. I have the presentation on it. But normal global tide is 2.4 m. Not 40m. Pacific atolls would not last long if the tides out in the oceans were much at all. The Maldives would be toast, or soggy toast. Try doing a sum to calculate the periodic timing effect of 1km of extra Earth on the existing planet if you have nothing better to do. Just for scale. Because I have…. and report back….. empirical ways are the best.
And anovver fing. Which ice sheets where are observed to lose volume 5 times faster than they were 30 years ago? That looks like a made up number to me. Especially when Antractica if effectively static in terms of ice acumulatiom, and the Arctic has lost less ice exch year since 2012, etc. I smell a slimey academic promoting a deceitful paper of no scientific merit they made up in a model.
Hypotheses and calculations add up to nought unless they explain measured variation in Earth’s rotation rate. Does your hypothesis help with an explanation of empirical measurements?
We could think outside the box. Is what we observe moving relative to us or are we moving relative to what we observe?
FYI – the study…27 March 2024
Melting ice solves leap-second problem — for now
Humans’ effect on the polar ice sheets is slowing Earth’s rotation, posing challenges for its alignment with the official time standard. Two researchers discuss the science behind the slowdown and the impact it has on timekeeping.
By Patrizia Tavella & Jerry X. Mitrovica
[Extract] On a millennial timescale, changes in Earth’s rotation reflect the combined effect of three geophysical processes4. First, friction between ocean water and the sea floor — both in shallow seas and in the deep ocean — has progressively slowed Earth’s rotation. This effect is known as tidal dissipation. Second, since the last ice age ended, Earth has undergone shape adjustments that have increased its rotation rate. These ongoing changes have brought the planet back to a shape that is more spherical than the flattened form it took when massive ice sheets existed in its polar regions. Finally, the coupling between Earth’s iron core and its outer rocky mantle and crust means that any change in the angular momentum of the core must be balanced by a change of equal magnitude and opposite sign in the mantle and crust.
Although the individual contribution of each process is somewhat uncertain, their sum is known precisely: it has led to an increase in Earth’s rotation period of 6 millionths of a second per year4. [bold added]
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00850-x
Not seeing ‘somewhat uncertain’ in their assertion that ‘Humans’ effect on the polar ice sheets is slowing Earth’s rotation’.
First: A peaceful Easter to all.
Humans do effect the earth’s rotation. On a millennial timescale, every inflection point of the Eddy cycle. But it does not apparently trigger every time. However the time change is far greater.
Take 2346 bce, an Eddy cycle root, a critical inflection point. According to the Talmud, quote: “But because the people of the generation of the flood changed their actions for the worse, the Holy One, Blessed be He, changed for them the acts of Creation, and instead of Kima setting, He caused the constellation of Kima to rise during the day and He removed two stars from Kima, and in this way He brought a flood to the world.“
Kima is the Pleiades. Precession, due to an earth axial tilt change, reduced the year by near 150 days (not micro-second).
Every time the new moon, or the full moon, passes the sun -earth conjunction the rate of earth rotation changes, increasing or decreasing. Tidal dissipation? – not so sure.
G F Dodwell was very right.
Really? Is this a joke or did this just become religious cult site?
“Kima is the Pleiades. Precession, due to an earth axial tilt change, reduced the year by near 150 days (not micro-second).” No it didn’t. Is anti science nonsense at an Old Testament BS level, per the records of actual change we have and the models we can build.
Anything according to any religious scripture is probably manufactured nonsense. In this case its Talmud nonsense, whatever a Talmud is, some sort of Koran?.
In case I am wrong, where is the verifiable science measurements that support this?
PS What I want to know is how will the Earth re synchronise to make up for the hour they reset time back last night?
13th March 1986 Headline “Freddie Starr ate my hamster”
24th April 1988 Headline ” World War Two bomber found on Moon”
1st April 2024 BBC Headline “Climate Change is an April Fool”
Well the first two were credible!
@ brianrlcatt,
That post was made in somewhat inverted ‘tongue in cheek’, so if man was blamed for everything by the gods that be the precession in the Talmud and therefore a major change in time is man’s fault and man’s doing.
But the statement is serious. It took me the best of ten years to corroborate with a major precession jump in 2346bce in connection to an axial tilt change. I have now found it everywhere in the ancient texts.
The BS is in some of the foie gras science man/we have been fed from Ptolemy’s days.
Start here for a change https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2022/10/31/searching-evidence-astronomy-for-the-heretic/