As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about….
Excerpts from the New Scientist
Warming oceans could cause Earth’s axis to tilt in the coming century, a new study suggests. The effect was previously thought to be negligible, but researchers now say the shift will be large enough that it should be taken into account when interpreting how the Earth wobbles.
The Earth spins on an axis that is tilted some 23.5° from the vertical. But this position is far from constant – the planet’s axis is constantly shifting in response to changes in the distribution of mass around the Earth. “The Earth is like a spinning top, and if you put more mass on one side or other, the axis of rotation is going to shift slightly,” says Felix Landerer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The influx of fresh water from shrinking ice sheets also causes the planet to pitch over. Landerer and colleagues estimate that the melting of Greenland’s ice is already causing Earth’s axis to tilt at an annual rate of about 2.6 centimetres – and that rate may increase significantly in the coming years.
Now, they calculate that oceans warmed by the rise in greenhouse gases can also cause the Earth to tilt – a conclusion that runs counter to older models, which suggested that ocean expansion would not create a large shift in the distribution of the Earth’s mass.
…
The team found that as the oceans warm and expand, more water will be pushed up and onto the Earth’s shallower ocean shelves. Over the next century, the subtle effect is expected to cause the northern pole of Earth’s spin axis to shift by roughly 1.5 centimetres per year in the direction of Alaska and Hawaii.
The effect is relatively small. “The pole’s not going to drift away in a crazy manner,” Landerer notes, adding that it shouldn’t induce any unfortunate feedback in Earth’s climate.
…
And climate change can also affect the Earth’s spin. Previously, Landerer and colleagues showed that global warming would cause Earth’s mass to be redistributed towards higher latitudes.
Journal reference: Geophysical Research Letters (in press)
full story here
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“The Earth is like a spinning top, and if you put more mass on one side or other, the axis of rotation is going to shift slightly”. So if China and India keep adding more skyscapers, more cars and trucks, for their nearly 2.5 billion combined population, this will tilt the Earth’s mass towards Asia?
Of course tectonics has nothing to do with this. Funny how these dramatic predictions fail to be replicated in the geologic past. In less than 100 years 6.5 billion humans can change the tilt of the planet! They conviently forget that bacteria alone out masses them on this planet by about a factor of 10.
Pure alarmist HEADLINE
THE EARTH AXIS WILL TILT!!!!!!
but
The effect is relatively small. “The pole’s not going to drift away in a crazy manner,” Landerer notes, adding that it shouldn’t induce any unfortunate feedback in Earth’s climate.
All part of the pre-Copenhagen agenda
cough….bollocks
What about continental drift, growing the Atlantice and shrinking the Pacific? What about tectonic plate action, shifting land masses around, for example Australia is now slightly further north than it was 150 years ago? What about the growth in the distance between the Earth and the Moon? All miniscule changes, but what effects? Who knows!
This is all mind bogglingly silly IMO…Copenhagen is still a long way away plenty of time for more disaster “studies”.
And when the polls shift polarity….
Reply: Was that a really really clever pun, or just an accidental spelling Malaprop? I’m thinking the latter, but it is still brilliant. ~ charles the moderator
So what movements of a similar nature, but in the opposite direction, during the Maunder and Dalton minima? Presumably there were similar type movements when the Vikings inhabited Greenland a thousand years ago. We are still here so no need to panic.
The wobble must have been ferocious when Pangaea was around 🙂
Is this part of the comedy section?
Re:
“And climate change can also affect the Earth’s spin. Previously, Landerer and colleagues showed that global warming would cause Earth’s mass to be redistributed towards higher latitudes.”
Could some explain how, please? It seems to me that if because of global warming, the ice setting on top of the continent of Antarctica is melted and presumably equally distributed over the globe, then the total mass is distributed over the lower latitudes, that is, toward the equator. The same with the ice melting from the island of Greenland.
What is the mechanism by which mass is distributed toward the poles instead of away from the poles?
This Warming hysteria is getting really annoying.
I know it is August, and summer in the (for now) Northern hemisphere, but have I missed something? When did The Fortean Times and the window-lickers take over the New Scientist?
Oh goody, another ‘scientific, peer-reviewed paper’ to add to my ever growing pile of junk that I can dig out and amuse my (as yet unborn) grandkids in a few years.
Now if we could just get everyone to only drive east we can change the length of a day…
Cheers
Mark
So how much tilt has already been caused by the warming since the last ice age? “Global sea level rose by about 120 m during the several millennia that followed the end of the last ice age (approximately 21,000 years ago),” (IPCC Report AR4 FAQ.5.1). And is it a problem?
No comment … nuff said ^^
The shifting around of the Pacific Warm Pool also changes Earth’s length of day. Compared to the other factors which change LOD the effect is small, but measurable.
The largest effects on LOD, and the position of the magnetic poles, is caused by shifting of the sub crustal currents which move closer to and further away from the surface and sea bed. These overturn heavy magnetic and radioactive elements which cause the earth’s rotation speed to change slightly. The usual analogy is with a spinning ice skater pulling in their arms and spinning faster as a result of the conservation of angular momentum.
I have found an interesting correlation between changes in Earth’s length of day and the latitudinal motion of the solar system centre of mass in relation to the sun’s equatorial plane.
http://i630.photobucket.com/albums/uu21/stroller-2009/lod-ssb.gif
This implies that the relative positions of the planets affect Earth’s rotation speed.
Among other things.
Reversals in the multidecadal changes in length of day seem to precede changes in the direction of the global temperature record by around 5-7 years. This has been noted by the NAO, an American govt body which plans fisheries policy, since these changes affect fish stocks. Their publications have been frequently linked on this blog recently by contributor ‘nogw’. I came across the NAO docs a year ago while researching the links between LOD, atmospheric angular momentum, and global temperature. AAM contributes around 10% to changes in LOD, the changing sub crustakl currents making up most of the rest, according to NASA’s Dr Richard Gross.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=15
Gross has reconstructed LOD back to 1832, and it is his series I used in my graph above.
Another interesting study is in publication by Ian WIlson of Australia, which uses a Russian reconstruction back to 1650 with which he finds a correlation to the motion of the sun relative to the solar system centre of mass in the orbital plane, perpendicular to the axis I’m studying.
It’s all getting very interesting.
I was planning on building a nice big rockery in my garden, dammit! Now I’ll have to dig a pond instead…
Nice tie-in with the current 2012 hysteria turning up. One of the “theories” about the Mayan calender is that t predicts the day when the earth will flip over on it’s axis.
Who is paying for this crap? The American taxpayer.
Glad I’m not one.
Did anyone read Charles Hapgood theory?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hapgood
Thats old – very old news
These people should write fantasy scripts for the movies.
Mmmm…. wonder why the world did not ‘shift’ during the medieval warm period, or any of the other warmer than now periods.
Oh well add it to the list.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
So, what is supposed to happen when too much ice forms at the Poles?
Earth un-tilts. And as it un-tilts, the poles get less summer and grow colder.
Omigosh, another Ice Age cometh !
And it’s all due to Daylight Shortening Time.
Archonix (01:48:30) :
2011 is when the Sea, chastened by the Sun, will no longer pass and the Asiatic part will change. The heat of Venus will harry all of Africa, and Saturn will no longer measure it’s reign.
Wasn’t it Saturn’s motion in conjunction with Jupiter that tugs the Earth’s axial tilt? Fell out of popularity as warming theories explain the known universe.
The Untilting of Earth due to too much ballast created by man in the Northern Hemisphere.
Gotta give Hansen something to do.
Sigh, yet another doomsday scenario… they keep piling up… what’s next? Earth’s orbit is changed just slightly enough by global warming that an asteroid that would have passed us by now collides with us? We’re doomed… in a billion or so years while the Sun is expanding the Earth will fry… so might as well party like it’s 9999! In 2037 the unix time clock roll over will doom us… 2012 is coming… the bus down the street has your name on it… as does the bullet in that gun over there… sigh…
How about we focus on real pollution problems like the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch and try to improve our lives before the end comes however that is?
RunFromMadness:-)
I couldn’t agree more!
I dare say next it will be a change in the Earth’s rate of angular momentum due to AGW that will cause it so spin off at a tangent into outer space, upshot – WAGTD if we don’t mend our evil ways! I await the next scary disaster story with eager anticipation. Anybody any guesses as to what that might be?