Excessive use of underground water has changed the axis of the earth

Humans have used so much underground water that the earth’s axis has changed

Between 1993 and 2010, the Earth’s axis shifted by 31.5 inches (80 cm) due to the amount of groundwater that humans pumped out of the planet, according to Tekna Technology News Service. During this period, humans have removed 2,150 gigatons of water from natural reservoirs in the planet’s crust. If that much was dumped into the world’s oceans, its surface would rise by 0.24 inches (6 mm).

A new study shows that moving such a huge amount of water has an effect on the axis on which the planet rotates. Scientists came to this conclusion by modeling changes in the position of the Earth’s rotation pole, the point on which the planet’s imaginary axis is located. The position of the rotation pole does not coincide with the geographic north and south poles and actually changes over time, so the axis of rotation depends on the different layers of the planet’s crust at different points in time.

Since 2016, scientists have known that the pole of rotation will be affected by climate-related processes, such as the melting of ice and the distribution of water mass transfer. But this was not known until researchers added pumped water to their models.