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| Picture credits: NASA |
Climate change has seriously kicked on in recent times, with every new year setting new temperature records. It has resulted in a large amount of glacial melt in Greenland, Antarctica and various mountainous regions throughout the world. As we know, glaciers are larges MASSES of ice. When they melt, that mass is converted into liquid water, which is circulated over a large area.
Now, scientists have found a dramatic effect of this melt. The axis has started to shift towards the UK! Previously, there had been a smaller shift towards Canada, but starting in the year 2000, the axis took a dramatic turn and started shifting towards the UK at a much higher rate.
This shift is a result of the conservation of angular momentum. Due to the shift in mass on the Earth’s surface, the center of mass of the Earth has slightly shifted, which has lead to the axis, the imaginary line on which the Earth appears to spin, heading in another direction. This effect does not radically effect us in any way, but, the GPS has to take note of this change in order to maintain accuracy.
This is NOT the same as precession, however, which is a more commonly understood term. Precession is the phenomenon where the Earth’s axis wobbles and traces an elliptical shape in the sky. During precession, the axial tilt varies slightly, but the position of the axis on the Earth’s surface is not influenced by this phenomenon. It takes about 26000 years for one complete precession cycle (360 degree turn).
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| Precession, which is why the pole star has changed since the past and will change in the future |
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