Our planet is, without a doubt, a treasure trove of mysteries: every day, new discoveries are made and, from them, studies and research begin to emerge.
Now, yet another piece of news about planet Earth has shocked the world’s population: our blue planet has been altering its rotation around its own axis by approximately 80 centimeters.
However, there’s no reason to panic: for now, everything is fine and there’s no major impact that you’ll notice right away, but it does expose an important aspect of how we’re significantly affecting planet Earth.
Ki-Weon Seo and his team at Seoul National University noticed a change in the extraction of groundwater, the water we use every day in our homes, farms, factories and thousands of other places.
Apparently, the way we are using our planet’s water can have a significant influence on the way the Earth rotates.
The role of groundwater in the Earth’s rotation
The issue is quite simple to understand: as we extract water from the ground, this changes the distribution of mass on Earth. The phenomenon would be something like adding or removing weights from a spinning top. Analyzing this, it was identified that groundwater is a significant factor in terrestrial changes.
Years ago, in 2016, scientists discovered the ability of water to adjust the Earth’s rotation. However, it was not until 2023 that Seo’s team was the first to define the specific role of groundwater in this process.
To understand this better, imagine that you are spinning a basketball on your finger. As you move your hand around the ball, you can feel it moving and trying to balance itself even with the change in force.
This is basically what is happening to our planet, but on a much larger scale.
In the study, the team analyzed data from 1993 to 2010. With the analysis done, the researchers arrived at the impressive amount of 2,150 gigatons of groundwater pumped.
The subtle shift in our planet’s axis of rotation was the consequence of all this pumping. The study was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
What does this mean for us?
Well, you might be wondering what the consequences of all this are for us, human beings. Given this, will we have to adjust our calendars or will we gain an extra season in the middle of the year? Not exactly.
To everyone’s relief, the seasons and the day-to-day weather on our planet will not change so drastically from one hour to the next, but little by little we can start to feel some differences.
NASA researcher Surendra Adhikari warns about climate change and says the implications may not be as trivial as we would like.
He also claims that the impact is much greater when groundwater is extracted in mid-latitudes, as observed during studies.
According to the researcher, western North America and northwestern India had the highest volumes of water removal during the period examined. Both regions are mid-latitude.
The study shows that our actions have a lot of weight and are not just affecting the environment on a local scale, even when we pump water from underground we can be bothering and “poking” the entire planet.
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