The slowing of the rotation of the Earth's core, combined with the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers, will lead to the fact that in 2029 humanity will have to shorten, rather than increase, the length of the day on June 30 or December 31 by a second, Report informs via TASS.
This is evidenced by the calculations of the American geophysicist Duncan Agnew, published in the scientific journal Nature.
“Our calculations show that humanity will have to subtract a leap second from UTC for the first time in 2029, given how the Earth’s rotation is affected by the movement of rocks in its core, as well as the melting polar glaciers,” the researcher writes.
Agnew came to this conclusion when analyzing how various processes in the interior of the Earth and on its surface affect the speed of rotation of the planet around its axis and the length of the day.
In the past, scientists believed that the length of the day on Earth was gradually increasing, which was associated with a slowdown in its rotation as a result of gravitational interactions between the Earth and the Moon.
The professor’s calculations showed that the typical length of a day is affected not only by how much the Earth’s rotation accelerates as a result of the work of geophysical processes in its core that are still unknown to us, but also by the speed at which the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica are melting.
Their disappearance leads to a redistribution of mass from the poles towards the equator of the planet, as a result of which the Earth's rotation slows down further.