Our Days Are Getting Longer as the Polar Ice Caps Melt.

This article focuses on how climate change is gradually lengthening the Earth's day by causing polar ice melt, which redistributes mass toward the equator and slows the planet's rotation. Researchers at ETH Zurich found that this effect has increased the day length by up to 1.3 milliseconds per century since 2000, potentially surpassing the moon's historical influence on Earth's rotation. Variations in day length impact critical digital systems reliant on precise timekeeping, leading to challenges such as the need for leap seconds—periodic adjustments to synchronize atomic and astronomical time. While recent Earth speed-ups have complicated this system, the General Conference on Weights and Measures has voted to suspend leap seconds from 2035 for 100 years, aiming to develop new synchronization methods amid ongoing climate change.