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SCIENCE – Without wanting to, man managed to significantly change the course of the earth. In 20 years, human activity has shifted our planet’s axis of rotation by almost a meter. This is according to a study published in the June 2023 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters by researchers at Seoul University. as you can see in the video at the top of the article.
How did mankind change the angle of rotation of the earth? By pumping a large amount of water into the ground, the scientists answer. They estimate that humans pumped 2,150 gigatons of groundwater between 1993 and 2010.
This water was used to irrigate crops, make clothes, drain construction sites, etc. For example, groundwater abstracted in mainland France accounts for more than 60% of drinking water consumption and more than 30% of global consumption. Agriculture according to data from the Bureau of Geological and Mining Research (BRGM). It is also frequently used in the industrial sector.
“The earth rotates a little differently”
Problem: The fact that this water is taken from the ground and then transported to the surface of the earth causes a significant change in the distribution of the water mass on the planet … to the point of shifting the water off axis.
“If you add a little bit of weight to a spinning top, the earth rotates a little differently when the water is moved,” the study authors explain. According to their analysis, humans diverted such a mass of water that the earth tilted 80 centimeters east of the Greenwich meridian within twenty years.
Seo et al. (2023), Geophysical Research Letters
Water’s ability to alter the Earth’s rotation was discovered in 2016. However, until now, the contribution of groundwater to these rotational changes has been unexplored. “We already knew that Earth’s gravity evolved wherever overpumping was accelerated, but the phenomenon is so large that it accounts for the hitherto unexplained deflection of Earth’s rotational poles and some of the ocean uplift.” , says hydrologist Emma Haziza on Twitter.
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“I am very happy to have found the unexplained cause of the rotational pole drift,” writes Ki-Weon Seo, a geophysicist at Seoul University who led the study. “On the other hand, as an earthling and father, I am concerned and surprised that groundwater pumping is another cause of sea level rise.”
By removing water from the ground, sea levels are rising
In fact, this study is the first to confirm with such certainty that the extraction of water from the ground is a significant contributor to sea rise. According to these new calculations, underground water extraction has raised sea levels by an average of 6 millimeters in twenty years.
The rise in sea level is today explained by two factors linked to climate change: the decrease in the density of water due to the heat that expands it and the increase in the amount of water mainly related to the melting of land glaciers … But also to the pumping of Groundwater, which has now been identified as the second cause of the phenomenon.
“Efforts by countries to slow the rate of groundwater depletion, particularly in these sensitive regions, could theoretically alter drift change, but only if these conservation approaches are sustained over decades,” said Ki-Weon Seo, geophysicist and author of the study.
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