Human depletion of underground reservoirs has shifted the global distribution of water so much that the North Pole has drifted by more more than 4 centimetres per year
The Earth has lost enough groundwater to thirsty humans to measurably tilt the planet’s axis of rotationThe net water lost from underground reservoirs between 1993 and 2010 is estimated to be more than 2 trillion tons. That has caused the geographic North Pole to shift at a speed of 4.36 centimetres per year, researchers have calculated. The results appeared on 15 June inThe tilt of the axis on which any celestial object spins tends to be stable.
Astronomers can track such motions in the Earth’s axis by observing quasars, the bright centres of distant galaxies that constitute practically immobile points of reference. The largest axis change is seasonal and is triggered by the motion of atmospheric masses as the weather and seasons change. This effect causes the Earth’s geographic poles to wobble by up to several metres every year.Shifts in water masses can cause smaller but still measurable changes in the tilt of Earth’s axis.
Gravitational surveys have measured the depletion of underground reservoirs, which is caused in large part by irrigation, especially in northwestern India and western North America. These surveys show that groundwater pumping shifted enough mass into the oceans to cause 6.24 millimetres of global sea-level rise between 1993 and 2010.
By including these changes in their model, the authors calculated that they should have a substantial impact on the Earth’s rotation axis. They predicted that the displacement of groundwater alone causes a shift in the North Pole of 4.36 centimetres per year, roughly in the direction of Russia’s Novaya Zemlya islands.
The research “distills the magnitude of groundwater extraction across the globe to a significant, relatable metric,” says Allegra LeGrande, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. Seeing yet another global impact of people on the world, she says, gives her a sense of “grief and awe.”: This story has been updated with comment from a scientist who was not involved with the research.
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