It is the guilt of the droughts, who are aggravated on our planet: loss of soil moisture is almost twice as fast than the defrost in Granelândia.
Earth’s rotation is oscillating more than expected, and now we know why.
It is the fault of climate change, according to a study in Science magazine in late March, more specifically, due to a Significant and rapid loss of soil moisture.
Researchers have confirmed that global drought largely caused by altering precipitation patterns and increasing temperatures, not only having an impact on ecosystems and agriculture, but also physically altering the orientation of the earth axis.
Between 2000 and 2002 alone, the planet lost 1,614 soil moisture gigatons – an amount almost twice on and much faster than Granelândia’s loss of ice in four years.
This dramatic change in the distribution of mass on the continents caused the Earth axis to move 45 centimeters until 2012 – a movement that was previously thought to be explained largely by the melting of the glaciers.
Although ice loss remains a factor to take into account, it is not culprit for the full length of change. By 2021, it had already been found that the inclination observed on the earth’s axis surpassed what could be explained only by the melting of the ice, and it was speculated that groundwater and the exhaustion of soil moisture were also contributing.
The new study confirms this fact, with updated and independent measurements.
The phenomenon is largely attributed to changes in precipitation and not evaporation. Despite increased temperatures, which should theoretically increase evaporation, drying is due to the reduction and irregularity of precipitation. Even in areas where it rains the most, precipitation is shorter and more intense, and there are increasingly long drought between rainfall.
“There was a period of several years in the early 2000s when there seemed to be a great loss of water from the continents, as foreseen by a particular climate model,” says Clark Wilson of the University of Texas, Ao.
“The question was, was this real? We now know the answer, because we have independent measurements that are consistent with it,” he explains.
Cited by the main author of the study, So-won SEOfrom the National University of Seoul, explains that “among the various models, only [um] He was successfully captured this dramatic event. Model creators have to evaluate and improve the accuracy of their models to better design future weather conditions. ”
Droughts are a real threat to the future of the planet. Its frequency has increased 1.7 times since the pre-industrial period, and the authors provide that the value increases even more with all current global warming projections.
