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Warmer waters could spin the Earth faster

The oceans' heating will shave instants off the day.

The warming of the world's oceans is going to shorten the day, say German researchers. But there's no need to adjust your watch: the shortening will be by only 0.12 milliseconds over the next 200 years, they estimate.

Read the story here.

Stranger than fiction: on 1 April 2004, news@nature.com reported that climate change was making the day longer - as an April Fools' day joke (see 'Day lost to stronger trade winds'). "I'm astonished we got anywhere close to the truth," says Nicola Jones, author of the original piece. "I just made that up."

Posted by Nicola Jones on April 1, 2007 12:01 AM |

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Comments

very very nice informations...thank you very much. mr kayici

Posted by: evden eve nakliyat | April 2, 2007 10:25 AM

April! April!

"April 1 is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other 364 days" (Mark Twain)

Posted by: Wu Teming | April 3, 2007 03:26 AM

I believe a statement needs to be corrected in the section "What time is it?" It is stated that the winds blowing from west to east are in the opposite direction to the planet's rotation. In fact, that would be in the same direction as the planet's rotation. The atmosphere's prevailing (westerly) winds are a superrotation, namely faster than and in the same direction as that of the Earth's rotation. And the de Viron et al. reference should contain the year 2002, not 2007.

[John Whitfield, Nature reporter, replies: After some globe-spinning in the Nature office, we’re also puzzled about this. As far as we can tell, our reporting on this is correct — the author of the earlier study has been quoted">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1816860.stm”>quoted as saying that an increase in winds blowing west to east will decrease the Earth’s rotation. The http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2001GL013672.shtml “>abstract of the paper says “the effect is mostly associated with an increase of the mean zonal wind”, but not direction of said wind. And yes, you are right about the date - that was a glitch in web production, and will be fixed.]

Posted by: David Salstein | April 3, 2007 08:44 PM

Yes, but should I put my watch forward?

Posted by: stephen plante | April 10, 2007 07:04 PM

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