Is Earth’s Axis Shifting?
Do you believe in human-caused global warming? Do you know that the earth wobbles?
Do you know that the Antarctic ice shelf is growing and shifting from one side of the earth to the other?
If you answered a throaty, certain “yes” to the first question but a less confident “I think so” to the next two, you better do some homework. Your prejudice toward human-cause global warming could be in danger.
In 1955, Time Magazine described the effects of the earth’s wobble on climate.
If the earth were a perfect sphere, he says, it would not be stable on its axis. The “smallest beetle crawling over it would change the axis of rotation in relation to markings on the sphere” because there would be no force to resist the kickback of the beetle’s crawling. But the earth is not a perfect sphere; it is a geoid slightly flattened at the poles by the centrifugal force of its rotation. So it spins like a fat flywheel on the short axis between the poles.
Fair enough. Most of us learned this in fifth grade science class. But the next paragraph provides an “aha!” moment to people following the global warming debates.
But what if the shape changes because of the rise of mountains or the accumulation of glacial ice? In this case, says Gold, the axis will shift to take account of the new distribution of mass. Slowly, the plastic earth will swell in the proper places to make itself a geoid again. When this process is complete, it will settle down with its North and South Poles in new places. Gold figures that modest crustal changes could make the earth turn 90° in less than 1,000,000 years, relocating its poles on its former equator.
When we look around for evidence of such enormous changes to earth’s weight distribution, we find a stellar example in Antarctica. I could have linked any of thousands of sites for this, but, in the interest of balance, I go with a lefty site, CommonDreams.org:
The vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet - a 2-mile-thick wasteland larger than Australia, drier than the Sahara and as cold as a Martian spring - increased in mass every year from 1992 to 2003 because of additional annual snowfall, an analysis of satellite radar measurements showed.
They determined that the icecap appeared to be thickening at the rate of 1.8 centimeters every year. The ice is thinning in West Antarctica and other regions of the continent.
So, how could that affect the earth’s attitude? Let’s go back to Dr. Gold’s research from 1955:
According to one school of geology, something of the sort may have happened many times already. The shift of the poles would explain remains of tropical vegetation found near the present poles and signs of glaciation found in the present tropics. Another proof: the magnetic particles in many ancient rocks do not point toward the present magnetic poles
My guess is that someone keeps an out for changes in magnetic North. The problem is that if such a shift is occurring, many irresponsible scientists will ignore it for fear of weakening their claims of human-caused global warming. But such a shift could explain why, for a year now, Asia and North America are getting colder and northern Europe is getting warmer.
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9 Responses to “Is Earth’s Axis Shifting?”
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Interesting post. Your conclusions are a bit off though. Northern Europe was warmer because of the ADO and PDO, that is atlantic and pacific decadal oscillations The shift of the poles as you suggest would take centuries not months. It is indeed a great idea and one to keep an eye on, but 1.8 cm per year is not likely to make us so unstable as to shift the axis by much.
Or are you going to argue that the overpopulated Northern Hemisphere is going to offset the earth’s axis faster? All those tall buildings will have more of an effect than a beetle due to the earth’s inertia. It is kind of like starting a spin with your arms in then spreading your arms out and slowing you down. Will tall buildings slow the earth making it less stable on its axis?
You also cannot forget about magnetic north. The bulk of the earth, below the crust, is liquid and molton. The magnetic north has been shifting. The http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/geomag/nmp/northpole_e.php site has the north pole moving northwest. “The most recent survey, completed in May, 2001, determined an updated position for the Pole and established that it is moving approximately northwest at 40 km per year.” The difference of 40km per year is not enough to make a huge difference to the climate. The shift has been gradual.
The http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4520982.stm link discusses magnetic north too. “Previous studies have shown that the strength of the Earth’s magnetic shield has decreased 10% over the past 150 years. During the same period, the north magnetic pole wandered about 1,100km (685 miles) into the Arctic, according to the new analysis.” Now magnetic north is not the same as the earth’ rotational axis. Magnetic north is governed by the flow of the earth’s core. I simply wonder how much of this would affect the earth’s axis. I mean a dozen centimeters of snow is nothing compared to the momentum changes of the inner earth.
John M Reynolds
This is satire, right? You can’t be serious. A brief bit of searching will show you all the holes in this (lack of) rationale.
Not satire, but not entirely serious, either. What happens, though, if growth of ice on the poles, or one pole, makes a Earth’s shape a little closer to spherical? According to Gold, the Earth’s axis would become less stable.
Or consider this from Space.com
As I said, everyone knows that the Earth’s axis wobbles. Why couldn’t that wobble affect climate, particularly localized climate?
Reading the Space.com article further, we find that my speculation may not be as far-afield as you might assume.
Alan,
You might also be interested in this, from LiveScience.com in 2005:
Since these are repeatable, measurable patterns that have actually happened, they are at least as interesting as the greenhouse gas theory.
Thank you, John Reynolds. I’m sure my conclusion are off a bit . . . or more. I’m not a scientist, but I did play one as a theatre major 20+ years ago.
I’m glad you took the time add some harder numbers to this. I’ve always been curious about the earth’s wobble and the consequences thereof.
So, is there any possibility that a “rounder” Earth would be more conducive to anomalous shifts in axis?
I think the main thing you are missing is the randomness of the changes. One beetle will sift the earth an infinitesimal amount in one direction. When you consider all beetles over time, then their movements would cancel each other out. While the accumulation of ice at the south pole is not random, it is also not that much extra inertia as compared to the mass of the earth. Because it is off center, it will have some effect as Gold notes. I do wonder about the use of the word stability. We are talking about small changes. Two millimeters every twenty years is more akin to the rate of tectonic shifts. Glaciers move faster than this.
When it comes to the earth’s wobble, there is a variation as noted by Milankovitch. He identified three cycles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
His axial tilt (obliquity) cycle does indeed affect climate. As the poles point more to the sun, there is less polar ice. When the poles are more perpendicular to the path of sunlight, more ice can form at the poles. This of course is outside the normal seasonal changes in tilt with respect to the sun.
“In addition, the angle between Earth’s rotational axis and the normal to the plane of its orbit moves from 21.5 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back again on a 41,000-year cycle. Currently, this angle is 23.44 degrees and is decreasing.”
If this were the only cycle affecting climate, then we would be looking at global cooling. My trouble is telling the difference between the 41,000 year axial tilt (obliquity) cycle and a much more gradual trend of which Gold is discussing. Regardless, either change is so slow that it would not be noticeable to the masses over even a few hundred years.
The most interesting thing I had read about this until your post is how the planet will continue to be in an ice age until Antarctica moves away from the south pole via plate tectonics. Of course, Gold’s theory suggests that the pole could move away from Antarctica instead.
John M Reynolds
Wobbly Earth and Climate Change
I have known of Earth’s wobbles for as long as I can remember, but it wasn’t much of a thought until I noticed an oddity with the path that the Sun travels through the sky where I live. Last week 5~6 JUNE 2008 the Sun came up where it would have a few years ago upon the solstice.
I pondered what effects an increasing instability in the wobble would have upon weather patterns and earthquakes.
My supposition is that there would be:
- AN INCREASE IN SEVERE/STRANGE WEATHER… Not just floods and droughts, also quick shifts of weather patterns.
Southern California saw 100 degree days come even earlier this year (although this may not be evident from the official temperatures, which are consistently off by 5 to 10 degrees) just after a late cold spell. The shift had been more than sudden, it happened in one day. 13 May 2008 the high temp where I live was 79 degrees. 14 May morning low was frosty 36 degrees and then shot up to a high of 98 and the high temps continued for a week. The official records say 14 May temps were 44/88, but that is not what we observed. The official temps hid the fact that on the same day there was a record low and a record high (for that day).
Then (catching all the weather forecasters by surprise) southern California was hit by a couple days of thunderstorms with hail and… tornados.
I like maps, (my daughter likes my weather forecasts which are usually much more accurate than official forecasts) and had given a forecast on 20 May of a possible storm hitting in a couple days. The next day the news-weather was saying a ‘cut-off’ low was making conditions for possible for scattered thunderstorms on 22~23 May.
What I had noticed in the days prior, was the intensity of the jet stream muscling its way south along the west coast. The earth wobbling the west coast toward the north during the preceding week might be a stretch, but it does offer an explanation to the unusually quick southern dip of the jet stream that caused the surprise cut-off low pressure system.
- AN INCREASE IN MAGNITUDE AND FREQUENCY OF EARTHQUAKES
A quick look at the information on the usgs.gov website shows information to support this supposition.
1900 thru 1949 there were forty-one (41) EQs of magnitude 8 or greater, an average of 0.82 per year.
In 2007 there were four (4) EQs of magnitude 8 or greater.
1900~1930 had fifty EQs of magnitude 7 or greater, an average of 1.67 per year.
2007 had seventeen (17) EQs of magnitude 7 or greater
2008 has already had five (5) EQs of magnitude 7 or greater.
Scrolling through data it seems that worldwide EQs of magnitude 2.0 or greater occur at about 12 to 20 per day. On 14 MAY there was about 75 EQs, 13 MAY had about 130 and 12 MAY had over 200.
Is there a correlation? The 12 May 2008 earthquakes in China (and throughout the world) preceded the surprise tornados in Southern California, which were caused by the jet-stream making an unusually rapid and deep dive straight south down the west coast to Mexico.
Right now the weather conditions are similar; however, I would be surprised by thunderstorms in a couple of days because the jet stream needs a little more help in accelerating its southern advance and there has not been a huge increase in seismic activity in the last ten days (okay, 10 days ago was double the daily average, but far shy of 200).
Can an increase in the Earth’s wobble be related the elliptic passing through the galactic equator? Perhaps amongst all the Mayan end of world and planet X rabble something is being over-looked. By some accounts the elliptic passed through the galactic equator back in 1987 ~ 1989 which supposedly snubs the Mayan calendar and renders it a non-event because nothing happened, right?
Maybe something did happen, and is still happening. It’s fairly accepted that solar activities have increased in the past decade. Are we also seeing increased instabilities in the Earth’s wobbles? Could this be a pre-cursor to the Earth flipping when 2/3 of the elliptic has passed through the galactic equator by the end of 2012 and the Age of Aquarius begins?
I noticed, to our orientation, North, South, East
West, the Earth Woobles South East to North West directly.
I thought I noticed that the wooble was off this year. Earth shadow maybe three inches West, or the Earth shifted South East.
Now I know its the Earths rotational axis.
Opinion: I believe at the begining, four billion years ago
our earth developed a momentum personality that dark matter presides. Our wobble is in good shape
Whould the removal of oil (weight) over the years cause the earth to wooble more,