Ice Cap Melting Affects Global Timekeeping Systems

Ice cap melting is one of many adverse results of global warming and climate change. Find out how the flow of meltwater from Earth’s poles to its equator is affecting our planet’s rotation rate and how our atomic clocks measure time.

An old friend of mine has an issue with celebrating annual or seasonal events. He insists that time is linear, not circular, and that milestones like birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and seasons are meaningless.

In a sense, he’s right, of course. After all, a clock only runs one way.

Even so, we humans are adapted to the planet on which we evolved. So, cyclical events like sunrise and sunset, the moon’s phases, the seasons, and the year are all engrained into our subjective sense of time.

Pythagorus Suggested Earth’s Rotation

Humans have suspected that the Earth was round and spinning on its axis since the dawn of civilization. Pythagorus suggested the Earth rotated back in the 6th century BCE.

After Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo realized that the Earth revolved around the Sun, people also began to grasp that Earth’s…