Melting polar ice is physically changing the length of a day on Earth
Human-driven climate change is redistributing water from the poles to the equator, physically slowing Earth's rotation and lengthening our days by roughly 1.3 milliseconds per century since the 1900s.
As polar ice sheets melt, the resulting water flows toward the equator, changing the distribution of Earth's mass. This shift acts like a spinning figure skater extending their arms, which physically slows the planet's rotation. While natural processes like post-glacial rebound typically shorten our days, the sheer volume of meltwater is now reversing that trend.
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