What happens if the earth shifts

But recently, many researchers have speculated that other processes could have potentially large effects on it as well," said first author Surendra Adhikari of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. We identified not one but three sets of processes that are crucial -- and melting of the global cryosphere especially Greenland over the course of the 20 th century is one of them.

In general, the redistribution of mass on and within Earth -- like changes to land, ice sheets, oceans and mantle flow -- affects the planet's rotation. As temperatures increased throughout the 20 th century, Greenland's ice mass decreased. In fact, a total of about 7, gigatons -- the weight of more than 20 million Empire State Buildings -- of Greenland's ice melted into the ocean during this time period. This makes Greenland one of the top contributors of mass being transferred to the oceans, causing sea level to rise and, consequently, a drift in Earth's spin axis.

While ice melt is occurring in other places like Antarctica , Greenland's location makes it a more significant contributor to polar motion.

Previous studies identified glacial rebound as the key contributor to long-term polar motion. And what is glacial rebound? During the last ice age, heavy glaciers depressed Earth's surface much like a mattress depresses when you sit on it. But the new research shows that since the s, the loss of hundreds of billions of tonnes of ice a year into the oceans resulting from the climate crisis has caused the poles to move in new directions. The scientists found the direction of polar drift shifted from southward to eastward in and that the average speed of drift from to was 17 times faster than from to Gravity data from the Grace satellite, launched in , had been used to link glacial melting to movements of the pole in and , both following increases in ice losses.

The research, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters , showed glacial losses accounted for most of the shift, but it is likely that the pumping up of groundwater also contributed to the movements. Related Story. Liu et al. Caroline Delbert Caroline Delbert is a writer, book editor, researcher, and avid reader. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses.

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