Via press release today from the University of Alberta.
The days are getting longer
Scientists reveal that the rotation of Earth’s core holds a clue to understanding global sea-level rise
Scientists are studying past changes in sea level in order to make accurate future predictions of this consequence of climate change, and they’re looking down to Earth’s core to do so. “In order to fully understand the sea-level change that has occurred in the past century, we need to understand the dynamics of the flow in Earth’s core” says Mathieu Dumberry, a professor in physics at the University of Alberta.
The connection is through the change in the speed of Earth’s rotation. Melt water from glaciers not only causes sea-level rise, but also shifts mass from the pole to the equator, which slows down the rotation. (Picture the Earth as a spinning figure skater. The skater moves his or her arms in to spin more quickly or out to slow down.) The gravity pull from the Moon also contributes to the slow down, acting a little like a leaver break. However, the combination of these effects is not enough to explain the observations of the slowing down of Earth’s rotation: a contribution from Earth’s core must be added.
One of only a few people in the world investigating changes in Earth rotation, Dumberry contributed his expertise on Earth’s core-mantle coupling to the study. “Over the past 3000 years, the core of the Earth has been speeding up a little, and the mantle-crust on which we stand is slowing down.” As a consequence of Earth rotating more slowly, the length of our days is slowly increasing. In fact, a century from now, the length of a day will increase by 1.7 milliseconds. This may not seem like much, but Dumberry notes that this is a cumulative effect that adds up over time.
Based on their work reconciling these discrepancies, the scientists involved in the study are confident in predicting sea level to the end of the 21st century. “This can help to better prepare coastal towns, for example, to cope with climate change,” says Dumberry. “We’re talking billions of dollars of infrastructure here.” Dumberry notes that this study serves as a stimulus for more work to continue investigating the deep interior of our planet.
The findings, “Reconciling past changes in Earth’s rotation with 20th century global sea-level rise: Resolving Munk’s enigma,” were published in the December 11, 2015 issue of the journalScience Advances.
With 12 climate change-related centres and institutes and 24 climate change-related Canada Research Chairs, the University of Alberta is committed to researching the causes and effects of climate change. Researchers study past climate changes to better predict future changes.
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I’m not sure how this is supposed to work. They reference the “poles”, but the north pole shouldn’t have any impact, because the mass of ice already displaces water, so it should have no impact on rotation. Interesting to note that this change in rotation has occured “since the Industrial Revolution”, i.e., since the end of the Little Ice Age. Shouldn’t we instead be seeing an increase in the length of the day for only the past 100 years?
They’re specifically talking about terrestrial ice. But what model for mass loss and mass redistribution are they using, how did they filter out effects from changes in ocean circulation and atmospheric circulation, and what is their certainty in the measurements they actually did take? Also, the Earth’s rotation has been slowing since the moon has been orbiting around the planet. Smells of pseudoscience to me.
Furthermore, redistribution of mass within the lower crust and mantle needs filtered as does the isostatic movement of the crust.
Terrestrial glaciers are often well above sea level, melting them would cause mass to get lower in elevation.
actually it will….it has to do with polar moment of inertia…it’s affected by the distance from the centroidal axis. the ice is actually above the level of the water…….so it would create a larger polar moment of inertia.
In which case, as the ice melts there should be an increase in rotational speed, not decrease. I’m going to guess that to within measurement error you can’t detect the effect of melting all the sea-borne ice at the north pole, since 90% of the mass is “below” sea level, and since it’s relatively close to the axis of rotation the effect is smaller still.
Length of the day changes back and forth with the solar cycles (see link below)
“One of only a few people in the world investigating changes in Earth rotation, Dumberry contributed his expertise on Earth’s core-mantle coupling to the study. “
Rubbish, there are hundreds of studies related to changes in Earth rotation, even I have written a paper on the subject
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01071375v2/document
On the issue of “Rubbish” do we have an empty garbage can? Below are 2 papers with my headings that shows ‘climate change’ will lead to:
Earth’s rotation to speed up
Earth’s rotation to slow down
WUWT?
More similar fun can be found on my list here. Enjoy!
My grandfather who was an astronomer working at Mt. Wilson studied the earth’s rotation, 100 years ago. This is not surprising news, the earth has been slowing down its rotation since it was born. And the moon was a lot closer, too!
But before doing that: There’s another way of checking it, because if the radius of the Earth increases, because sea level is rising, then immediately the Earth’s rate of rotation would slow down. That is a physical law, right? You have it in figure-skating: when they rotate very fast, the arms are close to the body; and then when they increase the radius, by putting out their arms, they stop by themselves. So you can look at the rotation and the same comes up: Yes, it might be 1.1 mm per year, but absolutely not more. It could be less, because there could be other factors affecting the Earth, but it certainly could not be more. Absolutely not! Again, it’s a matter of physics. So, we have this 1 mm per year up to 1930, by observation, and we have it by rotation recording. So we go with those two. They go up and down, but there’s no trend in it; it was up until 1930, and then down again. There’s no trend, absolutely no trend.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner in an interview with Gregory Murphy for EIR (Executive Intelligence Review). In June, 2007. But this is new research and reasoning?
The length of the day is a function of the distance between the earth and the moon. After the moon collided with the earth, the earth day was about 5 hours. As time passed the distance between the earth and the moon has increased and so has in proportion the earth’s day. At some point in the distance future (millions of years from now) the earth day will be 25 hours. All these other claimed factors are minor or rubbish.
So… Now we have Global Speeding?
The core is speeding up and the mantle is slowing down? what if they part company? is Hapgood becoming fashionable?
Here is the article in full
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/11/e1500679.full
It is very interesting but warrants careful reading. I can not see how they have taken into account previous periods of glacial advance and retreats over the last 1000 years. I can also not see they have taken into account the input from groundwater which is said to be currently adding 0.6mm per year to sea level.
tonyb
The text breaks down sea level rise as follows;
“melting of glaciers (0.7 ± 0.1 mm/year, as noted previously) (18), thermal expansion (0.4 ± 0.1 mm/year) (10), and net anthropogenic storage of water on land (−0.11 ± 0.05 mm/year)”
Presumably this last input-which comes from Church-relates to reservoir storage rather than that coming from aquifers.
tonyb
climatereason December 14, 2015 at 9:10 am
I find the following interesting’
By picking 1990s as a cut off date they exclude the worst of the “controversial” date
We limit our discussion to estimates based on observations up to 1990 to avoid signals associated with the onset of major polar ice mass flux and the acceleration of mountain glacier melting beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to the present (7–10).
michael
1.7 milliseconds a year adds up over time.
Yes it does, and I’ve just invested several years of my extra time from longer days typing this comment.
The question now is – dare I commit any more time reserves contemplating the wisdom or otherwise of my action?
“1.7 milliseconds a year adds up over time.”
I think I’ve discovered a link between length of day increase and my stock portfolio. 😉
That’s 1.7 milliseconds per century according to the article.
so when do I need to change my clock???
Reminds me of the old saw about the student at the back of the room waving frantically: “Professor! When did you say the sun would burn out?” He responds: “I said in about four billion years.” “Oh, that’s a relief,” says the student, “I thought you said four million years.”
At that rate, in a billion years a day will be 28.7 hours long. But that rate of change will slow down slightly as the moon recedes.
And then a year will only 305.4 days long compared to 365.24 now. I can’t imagine how Earth’s biosphere will adapt to such radical change since it apparently can’t adapt to 1 C warmer than present 100 years from now without apocalyptic implications.
We should spend about 100 billion per year over the next 3000 years to help poor nations adapt to this catastrophic global rotation change. Many moths will be at risk because of the longer days, and corresponding earlier springs. Global devastation is the only possible result.
And what about the school year??? Kids would love fewer days! 🙂
The last paragraph of the press release is a total non sequitur. Although the press release drafter mentions “climate change” in the first sentence, there is nothing in the remainder of the release having to do with climate change. Are people really so clueless that they’ll refer to any change in the Earth as climate change? It truly makes one wonder.
Climate change had to be added somewhere to get funding for an otherwise less politically interesting paper. Just as the cost of infrastructure on the coast was purely there for monetizing the paper.
As many AGW’ers will tell you, the earth was perfectly static until man came along.
I don’t think they are clueless, more like they are playing to the current rules. If you don’t mention climate change you don’t get the grant money
The two lines that reveal the real purpose of this release:
“One of only a few people in the world investigating changes in Earth rotation, Dumberry…”
“Dumberry notes that this study serves as a stimulus for more work to continue investigating the deep interior of our planet.”
Dumberry doesn’t have the strength in numbers to lobby for more money so he resorts to the scare tactic of rising seal levels. Sad.
Well, its the inverted pyramid of traditional journalism turned upside down, as all things are these days.
In the old days, you put the important stuff first, then less important stuff, down to the totally unimportant stuff. You did this just in case a salesman had sold another underwear ad, and they need to cut your worthy prose (don’t tell a working journalist this, as they don’t like being reminded that they only have a job to keep the underwear ads from running together).
Now its: headline, which usually misrepresents the lede (i.e., top of story), which sometimes contradicts the details in the story, which has no reference anyway to the scientific paper (which the journalist – really an unpaid intern) didn’t read. All this has little to do with the actual data, which might, if only by accident, made it into the appendix.
So basically its now: unpaid intern rewriting a press release from a Green Blob organization which trumpets the science of a paper that barely says what they think it says, hoping nobody checks (which we do, which is why global warming is so far down the list of things that people actually care about).
Is there a prize for the weakest connection between a physical parameter and global warming?
I was thinking along those lines. Why is sea level rise linked as the reason for changes in the length of day? Don’t subduction earthquakes reduce the length of day? And don’t volcanoes also affect the length of day? How can filter out the frequent microsecond adjustments that earthquakes and volcanoes cause from sea level rise adjustments?
Taking all variables into account was beyond the scope of this study, it is a climate change study.
Ian Wilson was on to the climate importance of length of day variability some time ago.
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/solar-cycles/IanwilsonForum2008.pdf
Ron Clutz
Thank you, that was most interesting read. I am going to have to think on it a bit.
It is getting more bizarre every day.
Ah, but every day it gets bizarre more slowly.
The Ian Wilson article points out that at times day length is shortening as well. The moon is not all that effects day length. How much there is to know and how little we know.
+1 Alan
“In fact, a century from now, the length of a day will increase by 1.7 milliseconds. This may not seem like much, but Dumberry notes that this is a cumulative effect that adds up over time.”
So, in a century we are talking about .17 seconds. And the relevance to Global Warming is?
0.0017 sec. – It’s worse than you thought!
Oh my gawd! 1.7 seconds every million years?
I guess I shouldn’t have complained when they had to introduce a third digit to explain “warming”.
I’m surprised they haven’t found a way of blaming the Earth’s slower rotation on CO2.
Give it time!
Hey, the CBC in Canada is ON THE CASE!:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/sea-level-earth-rotation-1.3361446
I knew it!
Ah, but they are – just read the article. Melt water from the polar ice is moving to the equator, which slows the rotation.
Of course, that only works when you use the models to “prove” that the total polar ice mass is decreasing, rather than believing your lying observations that tell you it is increasing. (Before the usual troll runs into the room – two poles, remember?)
Well you see, CO2 weighs more therefore the mass of the earth’s atmosphere is increasing and slowing its rotation rate. Now that didn’t take long did it?
Carbon was in the ground, now CO2 is in the atmosphere. Obviously the atmosphere is further from the axis of rotation than is the ground. Ergo, raising carbon from underground to the atmosphere will cause the earth’s rate of spin to slow. It’s worse than we thought.
This is just some attempt at time warp: a means of stretching out the date by which even the most greedy, and/or unintelligent of Climate Scientists supporting CAGW and Climate Change will have to admit that CO2 levels has little if any relevance! They must keep that gravy train on the tracks for as long as possible! Look at the number of Research Programmes listed above, simple for Alberta Canada!
“… the core of the Earth has been speeding up a little, and the mantle-crust on which we stand is slowing down.”
————
Won’t that cause increased friction/heat/volcanic activity/tectonic activity/”global warming”?
leaver?
400 million years ago, there were 400 days in the year. The Earth’s rotational speed has been slowing down for hundreds of millions of years
What, you want to introduce actual long-term data to the discussion?
But they were doing so well with a much (much, much) smaller subset of three thousand years.
Oh, sorry, I though they were giving us an example about “start and end point bias”.
You seem to be talking about science.
Never mind…
(Nice pose on the guy, though. Very thoughtful and genius-like).
At first glance, I thought “a geology study”, we can take a break from Global Warming for a bit.
*sigh*
No matter what your field of study, it is CAGW all the way down.
One university, 12 climate change centers, 24 Research Chairs. Is there any possibility they still have room to do science?
“24 Research Chairs”
Any chance that Big Green will eventually go broke having to endow so many chairs?
Appears to me they’ve specialized themselves into quite a bind when this climate change silliness comes to an abrupt halt…
Is there any possibility they have any room for anyone who does not toe the CAGW line? No! Alberta’s new socialist government will see to that!
You can tell from this graph how easy it is to forecast earth’s length of day up to hundreds of years in the future:
/sarc
“In fact, a century from now, the length of a day will increase by 1.7 milliseconds”
Do you get the feeling that this guy is not into error analysis?
It could be he is not really into analysis! I’d say by eyeballing the above graph that the peak-to-peak variation in earth’s length of day is about 2 milliseconds.
Ban scientists right now.
More models…
Reconciling past changes in Earth’s rotation with 20th century global sea-level rise: Resolving Munk’s enigma
(By Jerry X. Mitrovica, Carling C. Hay, Eric Morrow, Robert E. Kopp, Mathieu Dumberry and Sabine Stanley)
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/11/e1500679.full
Good God – I’m one of the taxpayers paying for this crap.
Ironic, isn’t it: the Alberta oil patch is basically drying up, which means the NDP government is broke, which means that taxpayers are actually paying more and more for this crap, when you add in all the interest payments.
Caligulajones – Hey, NDP strategy is just tax us peasants more. BTW, in the 80s oil went down to $10.00 a barrel.
A dollar went a lot further back in the 80’s.
This is interesting since the core is where the magnetic field is generated and anything that links the core to climate can help explain links to cosmogenic isotopes. Earth and Sun’s magnetic field help deflect cosmic rays. Earth’s magnetic field also deflects the solar wind and so all in all its pretty important. Earth’s magnetic field has recently gone walk about and is weakening.
http://euanmearns.com/the-laschamp-event-and-earths-wandering-magnetic-field/
http://euanmearns.com/solar-influence-on-glaciation-in-greenland/
Of course, stuff like this only feeds into the belief system of those who believe the earth is only 6,000 years old, you know.
Nobody denies that the sea levels are rising. They’ve been rising for something like 400 years, with no increase in rate over the last few decades.
The question is, how much of this rise is due to CO2. The answer to that question is: Not much.
So why is the core speeding up?
The darn thing is rather heavy, and speeding it up would require a LOT of energy, not to mention some sort of force acting on it.
I think it was meant to be stated only as a relative speed WRT to the crust speed.
You could calculate it: core density 8 tonnes/cubic M, acceleration to 1.7 milliseconds per day per 100yrs.
BTW, this must go down as a negative feedback. If signicant, it would be a good post for an engineer or physicist to put together. After all, it is due to climate melting ice. I’m an engineer, but having sampled 9 decades of life, I prefer to pass this off.
… Study past climate change to predict future cc. Is this old fashioned approach going to be permitted by the Synod of Climate Bishop’s?
Pre-postnormal geology used the principle that the present was the key to the past. The Synod outlawed this with their ruling that we got the past wrong and it needs to be continually adjusted as needed for it to be fit for purpose.
As Mark Steyn noted at the recent Senate hearing on climate dogma or data in reference to ‘adjustments’ to climate data, predicting what’s going to have happened in 1950 is more difficult than diagnosing the weather in 2100 apparently.
If the authors of this study are correct about how they will proceed, then I say kudos, with the caveat that they should be aware that their findings will be quite different than what they would have got had they done their work in 1950.
I have a theory that Gaia is slowing down due to the effect of wind turbines drawing too much energy from the air. I propose that Big Fossil Fuels put their squillions spent on funding climate sceptics into researching just how many bird-mincers the Planet can take before the tipping point is reached and rotation stops almost entirely. Our grandchildren may never know what a day is!
Just in case, /sarc.
Then there will be studies to show how many windmills must be reversed to speed the planet back up, and then the solar arrays necessary for powering them. If we cover the entire pacific with solar panels we might just save the planet!
Will, its “a thing”, as the kids would have it:
https://www.quora.com/Do-wind-turbines-slow-down-the-rotation-of-the-earth
And some might say that 1.7 milliseconds per century is the very definition of a “tiny, tiny, infinitesimal effect”…
But but but … didn’t we just hear that Antarctica is actually GAINING ice? That means that only the NH is slowing down – the SH is speeding up!
Sheesh, somebody call Hank Johnson! He doesn’t need to worry about Guam capsizing. With the SH trying to go faster than the NH earth is going to fracture at the equator, split open and all our water will drain into it leaving Guam safely sitting upright on the muddy bottom. We’re all doooomed!
“One of only a few people in the world investigating changes in Earth rotation, Dumberry contributed his expertise on Earth’s core-mantle coupling to the study.”
Pretentious bullshit: http://www.iers.org/IERS/EN/Organization/About/OrgChart/chart.html
Here’s the data: http://datacenter.iers.org/eop/-/somos/5Rgv/latest/213
And here’s the plot …
http://datacenter.iers.org/eop/-/somos/5Rgv/plotname/213/EOPC04_08_62-NOW_IAU1980-LOD.jpg
http://www.iers.org/IERS/EN/Science/EarthRotation/EarthRotation.html