When the Wall Street Journal publishes a popular science article! When obsessions interfere with rational thinking!
I would argue this tiny number could well be within the range of a measurement error! Plus, these are not measurements, but computer modeling results. Junk science?
"The Number ~1.33 The milliseconds added to day length per century over the past two decades, according to a new study. As temperatures warm, ice in the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica melts, and the resulting rise in sea levels slows down Earth’s rotation. A change of milliseconds seems insignificant, but it can cause problems for clocks, GPS and navigation apps, and satellites."
"Climate change is lengthening our days because rising sea levels slow Earth's rotation. Researchers from the University of Vienna and ETH Zurich now show that the current increase in day length — 1.33 milliseconds per century [???]— is unprecedented in the past 3.6 million years [???]. The team reconstructed ancient day-length fluctuations using the fossil remains of single-celled marine organisms known as benthic foraminifera. The study has just been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. ..."
From the abstract:
"Understanding the history of Earth rotation variations and its connection to mantle dynamics is one of the most important problems is global geophysics. However, our knowledge of these variations—in particular those induced by climate on geological timescales—is limited due to both modeling deficiencies and the scarcity of paleoclimate data.
In order to advance our understanding of this problem, here we first develop a new probabilistic deep learning methodology called Physics-Informed Diffusion Model (PIDM). We then use PIDM in conjunction with the recently available paleoclimate data—specifically, sea level variations since the Late Pliocene—to precisely reconstruct the history of climate-induced changes in the Earth's rotation rate (i.e., Length of Day variations:
LOD). We reconcile LOD inferred from various climate models and paleoclimate proxies (i.e., geological records such as fossil benthic foraminifera and coral reefs). Based on our reconstructions of LOD, we unravel
(a) large-amplitude fluctuations due to Quaternary ice ages, surpassing the magnitude of the currently known processes including those of atmosphere, land hydrology, and core,
(b) a previously unrecognized secular trend due to changes in the Earth's oblateness caused by the outset of Northern Hemispheric ice sheets, and
(c) the almost unprecedented rate [???] of increase in the length of day caused by century climate change."
Climate change slows Earth's spin: Day lengthening unprecedented in 3.6 million years (original news release from March 2026) "Comparing fossil archives with modern measurements – Today's increase in day length stands out clearly in climate history"
No comments:
Post a Comment