Research: in 17 years, people have shifted the earth's axis
Miscellaneous / / June 20, 2023
It's all about the depletion of groundwater.
Back in 2010, scientists calculatedthat from 1993 to 2010, people pumped out 2,150 gigatonnes of groundwater (one gigaton is a billion tons or a trillion kilograms). However, it was possible to prove this only in 2023 thanks to research South Korean scientists
It is difficult to estimate the real consumption of groundwater, since it is not always correctly recorded, and in some countries their consumption is completely limited by law. Therefore, scientists decided to consider the problem from the other side. They analyzed the tilt of the Earth's axis of rotation to find out how the distribution of water on the planet has changed.
The axis of rotation is an invisible line whose slope is affected by the distribution of the Earth's mass. This, in turn, is affected by the distribution of water below the surface. The easiest way to understand this is to imagine a spinning top: if you add extra weight to one of the sides, its rotation will change. It’s the same with the Earth: when the distribution of water changes, the slope of rotation changes - though not as noticeable as in the example with the spinning top.
The authors of the study modeled various scenarios for groundwater redistribution, taking into account known data on glaciers and ice sheets, as well as the observed drift of the Earth's rotation pole. It turned out that without taking into account the 2,150 gigatonnes of water described in 2010, the calculations diverged by 78.48 centimeters - that is, human activity is responsible for this shift.
The location of groundwater greatly affects how much it can change the drift of the pole. The redistribution of water from the middle latitudes is more critical. At the same time, during the period under study, most of the water was pumped out in the western part of North America and northwestern India - just in the middle latitudes.
Initiatives to slow groundwater depletion, especially in these vulnerable regions, could theoretically change pole drift reversal—but only if implemented and followed for decades.
The pole of rotation usually changes by several meters during the year, so changes due to groundwater pumping do not carry the risk of changing seasons. But in the future, this may have an impact on the climate, so scientists believe that regulation is worth doing today.
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