Man has extracted so much water from global aquifers that the difference has altered the tilt of the Earth’s axis. Between 1993 and 2010, underground reserves lost 2 trillion tons of water. An enormous number, equivalent to 2 million million tons and enough to shift the geographic North Pole towards central Russia by 4.36 centimeters per year. This is confirmed by a study published June 15 in the journal American Gephysical Union by Ki-Weon Seo and subsequently analyzed in an article in Nature. The axis of rotation of celestial bodies tends to remain stable, but “the movement of any mass of material on or within the surface can affect their rotation,” comments Ki-Weon Seo, author of the study and a geophysicist at Seoul National University.
The impact on the seas
The shifts in air masses, especially seasonal ones, also change the tilt of the Earth’s axis. Differences that scientists detect by observing the relative positions of distant celestial elements such as quasars, the centers of galaxies. The current study refutes the previous theory that the melting of the polar ice changed the tilt of the Earth’s axis. However, the calculations confirm that it is the enormous amount of water that is being taken from the aquifers. Most of this is for irrigation, with India and the US being among the main users of the water reserves. Demand for water has caused enough changes in the Earth system, including land subsidence and water mass shifts, to account for a 6.24 millimeter rise in sea level.
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