Global warming is causing a shift in the earth’s rotation which is altering universal time, giving rise to the possibility of inserting a negative “leap second” into timekeeping by 2029. A study in Nature attributes this to the melting of polar ice which is making the earth more spherical.
“Global warming is managing to actually measurably affect the rotation of the entire Earth,” said study author Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the University of California at San Diego. “Things are happening that have not happened before.”
Since the 1970s, there have been 27 leap seconds added to the universal clock because earth was slowing down. In one leap second the earth rotates a distance which is roughly equivalent to four football fields.
A leap second has not been added since 2016 because the earth stopped slowing down. This would be the first time that a negative leap second has been necessary.
“It is like a weather prediction of a big storm or hurricane. We can’t say for certain what will happen and when. However, we can say there is a higher percentage chance of a negative leap second than say 25 years ago,” Nick Stamatakos, head of the U.S. Naval Observatory’s Earth Orientation Department wrote.
“This is an unprecedented situation and a big deal,” said Agnew. “It’s not a huge change in the Earth’s rotation that’s going to lead to some catastrophe or anything, but it is something notable. It’s yet another indication that we’re in a very unusual time.”
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) today hosted the Global Summit on Extreme Heat to call attention to the probability of a “mass-fatality heat disaster.”
This comes on the heels of 2023’s “record-shattering temperatures, when 3.8 billion people – half the world’s population – sweltered in extreme heat for at least one day,” the Guardian reports.
The summit discussed the idea of naming heatwaves to garner them the attention other extreme disasters receive and explored projects such as tree planting and reflective roof coverings which can lower temperatures indoors. It also called for the development of heat action plans by national and local governments as well as corporations, schools, hospitals, and humanitarian groups.
Jagan Chapagain, the IFRC secretary general, drew comparisons to Kim Stanley Robinson’s apocalyptic novel Ministry for the Future, which opens with a deadly heatwave in India that kills millions of people, some of whom are poached alive in a lake they hoped to cool off in.
“It is, for now, science fiction,” he said. “We’re not there, yet. But extreme heat, far less visually dramatic than hurricanes or floods, is claiming lives and livelihoods with a stealth which belies its impact. Climate change is dramatically increasing the probability that we will see a mass-fatality extreme heat disaster soon.”
By 2050, with a temperature rise of 2C, heat related deaths could increase by four times, according to a recent study in the Lancet; China is currently well on the way to between 20,000 and 80,000 deaths annually, according to Guardian reporting.
In an Al Jazeera article Extreme heat is the silent assassin of climate change, Chapagain announced the first Heat Action Day this June 2 which will unveil an online toolkit to assist people in preparing for summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
… Half the world’s people – 3.8 billion in fact – simmered under extreme heat for at least one day last year.
Heatwaves across Europe killed more than 60,000 people in 2022. In the United Kingdom, roads melted and almost 3,000 people died. India sees at least 1,000 deaths a year attributable to extreme heat. In the United States, the number is similar. Extreme heat there kills more people than floods and tornadoes combined.
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