The axis of the Earth has shifted. Why groundwater use is to blame

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According to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the Earth’s axis is shifting eastward at an estimated rate of 1.7 inches each year due to decades of constant groundwater extraction and relocation.

Ki-Weon Seo, a geophysicist at Seoul National University who led the study, said in a statement: “Our study shows that among climate-related causes, groundwater redistribution actually has the greatest impact. on the drift of the pole of rotation.

The study says researchers from Korea, Australia and the United States found that between 1993 and 2010, humans extracted more than 2,150 gigatonnes of groundwater from inside the Earth.

The Washington Post said that amount of water could fill more than 860 million swimming pools.

The countries that extracted the most groundwater were western North America and northwest India and if that amount was dumped into the ocean it would raise global sea levels d about 0.24 inches (6 millimeters), CNN said.

A yellow tag noting water levels is left on an unused irrigation well after well water levels were measured by the Kansas Geological Survey Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023, near Marienthal, Kan. The Earth’s axis has shifted east at an estimated rate of 1.7 inches each year due to decades of constant groundwater extraction and relocation, according to a recent study.

Charlie Riedel, Associated Press

The distribution of water on the planet affects the distribution of mass. Like adding a tiny bit of weight to a spinning top, the Earth spins a little differently when water is moved, according to the release.

CNN quoted Surendra Adhikari, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: The ebb and flow of seasonal changes is related to the angle of the rotational axis of the planets, and over geologic time, a wandering axis could affect the climate on a global scale.

According to the United States Geological Survey, the many uses of groundwater include crop irrigation, plumbing, providing firefighting efforts, and maintaining livestock.

Polar motion

Seo told the Washington Post that Earth’s pole of rotation is tilted about 23.5 degrees from our plane of orbit around the sun, which is why we have seasons. The exact position of this pole changes a lot when the planet oscillates, a phenomenon called polar motion.

Groundwater redistribution also affects Earth’s mantle flow, or the flow of lava between the planets’ crust and outer core, which in turn impacts Earth’s polar motion, CNN said.

Adhikari said in the statement, They quantified the role of groundwater pumping on polar motion and its quite significant.

Seo said that although the discovery could explain the cause of the rotational pole drift, as a resident of Earth and a father, I am concerned and surprised to see that groundwater pumping is another source of sea ​​level rise, according to the statement.

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