Earth’s axis shift due to Climate Change
Source : Indian Express
GS II : Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.

Why in News?

Earth’s axis shift due to Climate Change. New research has added yet another impact to this list marked shifts in the axis along which the Earth rotates.

Earth’s axis is an imaginary pole going right through the centre of Earth from top to bottom. Earth has seasons because its axis doesn’t stand up straight.

Key Facts

• A study published in Geophysical Research Letters of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) says that due to the significant melting of glaciers because of global temperature rise, planet’s axis of rotation has been moving more than usual since the 1990s.
• Impact : While this change is not expected to affect daily life, it can change the length of the day by a few milliseconds.
• Since the 1990s, climate change has caused billions of tonnes of glacial ice to melt into oceans.
  • This has caused the Earth’s poles to move in new directions.
• North pole has shifted in a new eastward direction since the 1990s because of changes in the hydrosphere
  • From 1995 to 2020, the average speed of drift was 17 times faster than from 1981 to 1995.
  • Also, in the last four decades, the poles moved by about 4 metres in distance.
• The calculations were based on satellite data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission as well as estimates of glacier loss and groundwater pumping going back to the 1980s, according to Science Alert.
• Other Possible Reasons
  • Terrestrial water storage or change in non‐glacial regions due to climate change
  • Unsustainable consumption of groundwater for irrigation and other anthropogenic activities.
• In normal situation polar motion is caused by changes in the hydrosphere, atmosphere, oceans, or solid Earth.

The Earth’s axis of rotation is the line along which it spins around itself as it revolves around the Sun. The points on which the axis intersects the planet’s surface are the geographical north and south poles.

Earth’s rotation

• Earth’s rotation or spin is the rotation of planet Earth around its own axis.
• Earth rotates eastward.
• Earth’s axis is tilted 23.5 degrees. The angle varies a little over time, but the gravitational pull of the moon prevents it from shifting by more than a degree or so.

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