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3️⃣ A new study shows that the melting of the polar ice caps is causing our planet to spin more slowly, increasing the length of days at an “unprecedented” rate.

🌍 🧊 The paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows water flowing from Greenland and Antarctica is resulting in more mass around the equator, co-author Surendra Adhikari of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told AFP.

“It’s like when a figure skater does a pirouette, first holding her arms close to her body and then stretching them out,” added co-author Benedikt Soja of ETH Zurich. “The initially fast rotation becomes slower because the masses move away from the axis of rotation, increasing physical inertia.”

If the Earth turns more slowly, the length of day increases by a few milliseconds from the standard measure of 86,400 seconds.

A currently more significant cause of slowdown is the gravitational pull of the Moon, which drags on the oceans in a process called “tidal friction”.