The Guardian: Longer days due to global warming threaten the internet
With global warming, the days are getting longer, which could cause problems with the Internet and other services. The threat to the World Wide Web has been found by the authors of a new scientific paper, which is described by The Guardian.
“The length of a day changes by just a few milliseconds, but that’s enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions, and GPS, which rely on accurate time tracking,” the paper says.
The length of the day has been steadily increasing throughout the planet’s history due to the Moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth’s oceans and soil. However, the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets is returning water stored at high latitudes to the ocean, causing more water to accumulate in seas closer to the equator. As a result, the Earth becomes more “flattened” and rotates more slowly, and the length of the day increases.
Scientists used observational data and digital reconstructions to estimate the impact of melting ice on the length of the day between 1900 and 2000. The rate of slowing of the planet’s rotation varied between 0.3 and 1 millisecond per century. However, since 2000, the slowing has increased to 1.3 milliseconds per century.
The Earth’s rotation is projected to slow by 2.6 milliseconds per century by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced.
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