Earth Slows Rotation. Global Warming to Blame

Among the many negative consequences of global warming, there is one that threatens to affect all of humanity without exception. According to a study conducted by Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, the results of which were published by the American journal Nature, “global warming is having an impact on the Earth’s rotation rate, which has already recorded a slight slowdown.”

For the first time, it was discovered that “melting of the polar ice caps, driven primarily by the impact of human activities on climate change, has slowed the Earth’s rotation, a dynamic that could have very serious consequences for all of humanity.”

As Agnew explained, the melting of ice has reached a point where it determines the change in the distribution of the Earth’s mass, altering the angular velocity of the globe. That is, the conversion of solid ice to water leads to an increase in mass around the equator. “This is unprecedented: the fact that humans have caused a measurable change in the Earth’s rotation is truly remarkable,” Agnew said.