Something strange is happening to Earth's rotation. Now we know why
Earth is wobbling more than it should. Scientists say massive water losses are to blame
Tom Howarth
Published: April 20, 2025 at 5:00 am
Over the past two decades, Earth’s rotation has been behaving oddly – and scientists have finally pinned down one surprising reason: we’re losing water from the land.
A new study published in Science reveals a dramatic shift in the Earth’s axis since the early 2000s – amounting to a wobble of about 45 cm – was not caused by changes in the core, ice loss or glacial rebound, but by a massive and previously underappreciated loss of soil moisture across the planet.
In just three years, from 2000 to 2002, the world lost over 1,600 gigatonnes of water from its soils – more than the mass of Greenland’s ice loss over a much longer period.
And once that water drained into the oceans, it left a mark on the planet’s balance so distinct, it nudged Earth’s spin.
“There was a period of several years in the early 2000s where there seemed to be a big loss of water from the continents as predicted by a particular climate model,” Prof Clark Wilson, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the study, tells BBC Science Focus.
More:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/earths-rotation-soil-moisture
= new reply since forum marked as read
so long ago but hey 'climate change' is a hoax
drink bottled water which comes from bottle. My contribution to saving the planet.
We have Great Lakes, but they are also very precious.
Rolling back the protection of our water resources is another reason to be concerned with this administration.
