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Is global warming slowing the Earth’s rotation?

And what that could mean for planet’s future

Sam Asano
Sam Asano

Last week, I wrote about my own fantasy. I couldn’t even call it a fantasy as it wasn’t based on any credible scientific theory or experiments. I should’ve called it my view as an uneducated person wondering about the cause(s) of the frequent major earthquakes in the 20th and 21st centuries – that is I. I simply wrote the increased carbon dioxide and associated water vapor in the atmosphere are adding a large amount of weight to the Earth’s crust, a thin layer of porous surface only about 100 kilometers thick.

The idea was that the central core of the Earth is liquid, which does not compress. The only sector that can align under pressure could be the crust, where earthquakes originate. So, I just threw out an idea that the increased frequency of earthquakes, especially in the Pacific Rim may be directly caused by the global warming. After I filed my piece to newspapers, I had the deep sense of regret in doing things I had no business doing. The best, I said to myself, would be that I become a butt of jokes among students and young professors at the college town’s low-end bars, and the worst could be serious rebukes from some heavy-duty scientists at some renowned research facilities.

None of that seems to have happened so far. Right after my article was published, I received several emails from readers, all of whom wrote in with favorable tilt. I say it with some vagueness because this area we are stepping into has no way of accurately proving if it is true. However, there are some serious issues to be considered and analyzed.

I received an email from Jim Mastro of Dover. Jim states the increase in the carbon dioxide and associated water vapor would be distributed evenly and would not cause the serious tectonic plate distortion and disturbance. However, in his opinion the melting ice in both Arctic and Antarctic regions due to global warming would cause substantial change in the weight distribution of the Earth. This, I tend not to outright disagree with Jim.

So, I sat down and started to calculate the amount of weight that could be added to the world’s ocean by the melting ice both from Antarctic and Arctic regions. Since ice is lighter than water, this phenomenon would impact on two fronts. One is that the spinning Earth will have less weight on the both its north and south ends. That is the spinning top (the Earth) will have less weight on the top and bottom. Think of the Earth as a spinning top, which is an accurate description, by the way. This would affect its rotation cycle, wouldn’t it?

Secondly, the melting water will be joining the oceans, and their levels will be rising. There have been many predictions of the rise of the ocean by 2100 AD. One extreme is 8 feet (2.44 meters), while the minimum estimate is about 2 feet (0.61 meters). For calculation simplicity sake, I decided to take 1 meter as the rise of the sea level at 2100 AD.

I have a funny personal episode for you regarding sea level rise. My house was built in 1900 AD and was located about 50 feet from the sea and was up about 20 feet in elevation. One day I was watching some surveyors working on the front of my house, and I got curious why they were there. So, I went down to speak to them. It turned out a neighbor hired them to sort out his property line. The young man then said “Congratulations! By 2040 your house is on the waterfront!”

Now back to the main subject. I decided to calculate the weight of additional seawater by the sea rise of 1 meter in the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean covers 45 percent of the world’s sea area, and is by far the largest and heaviest body of water. By increasing its water by 1 meter, it adds a weight of 161,760,000,000,000 tons. Converting to the specific weight of seawater (as opposed to fresh water) it rises to 165,481,000,000,000 tons. In a simpler and mathematical expression, it is 1.65 x 1,015 ton. In a laymen’s term, it is 1.65 quadrillion tons.

The number is so large us average citizens really cannot appreciate the magnitude. Think of a spinning top (our Earth) with reduced weight on top and bottom and increased weight in the middle. Some perceptible change in the spinning cycle must have been occurring lately. That is what I suspect. Again, I am a real outsider and uneducated in this type of science, but my common sense tells me the top must be slowing its spin a bit. Perhaps the added water weight on the middle section of the Earth’s surface may not affect the downward pressure onto the crest as the opposing centrifugal force counteracts to reduce the effective weight on the crust, but it must influence the spinning cycle.

Has the Earth rotated a bit slowly lately? The figure must be very small. But, some astronomers have just won the Nobel Prize by detecting the gravity wave. Well, this spinning cycle detection cannot be as difficult as that, can it? Could some astronomers give us some light on this subject? I know you guys in academia don’t want to deal with us plain amateur folks, but it is our concern that the Earth is becoming a wreck from global warming and subsequent and related effects. And, the fact is we all live on Earth.

Thanks to people who sent emails to encourage me to continue this Quixotic adventure into the so-called professional big science. After all, it is our Earth and we all live on it. I am worried, and so are many others. Please send your observations.

Shintaro “Sam” Asano was named by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011 as one of the 10 most influential inventors of the 20th century who improved our lives. He is a businessman and inventor in the field of electronics and mechanical systems who is credited as the inventor of the portable fax machine. Write to him at sasano@gmail.com.