Overview
- Earth’s day is currently lengthening by about 1.33 milliseconds per century, based on 2000–2020 measurements tied to polar ice loss.
- The peer‑reviewed study from the University of Vienna and ETH Zurich appears in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.
- Researchers reconstructed 3.6 million years of variability by inferring past sea levels from benthic foraminifera chemistry and applying a physics‑informed probabilistic diffusion model.
- A near‑comparable pace occurred roughly 2 million years ago, but the present increase is faster than any time in the record.
- The authors project climate’s influence on day length will strengthen this century and could exceed lunar effects, raising concerns for GPS, satellite navigation and atomic‑clock synchronization.