The Earth's axis of rotation is being shifted because humans are overusing groundwater.

The Earth tilts on its axis as it revolves around the sun.

During the period mentioned above, humanity removed 2,150 billion tons of water from natural reservoirs beneath the Earth's crust. If the same amount of water were poured into the Earth's oceans, the world's water level would rise by 6 ml.

A new report now finds that such massive water loss has had an impact on the Earth's rotation axis, Space.com reported on June 18.

The research team, led by geophysicist Seo Ki Weon of Seoul National University (South Korea), came to the above conclusion by building a model of the change in position of the Earth's rotation axis. The rotation axis is the point where the Earth's imaginary axis protrudes from the surface if it were a physical object.

The position of the axis of rotation does not coincide with the north and south poles, and can change over time. Therefore, the axis of rotation will move to different locations on the Earth's crust.

Since 2016, scientists have known that climate-related processes can shift the axis, such as melting ice sheets and the redistribution of water mass from melting glaciers. But it wasn’t until researchers added information about groundwater withdrawals that the numbers really matched what was happening on the ground.

“The Earth’s rotation axis has actually changed a lot,” said team leader Seo. His team demonstrated that, among the climate-related factors, the most influential is the redistribution of groundwater resources due to human impact.

Because the Earth's tilt can affect the weather seasonally, scientists now wonder whether the change in rotation contributes to long-term climate change.

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