Humans have extracted so much water from the global aquifers that variation has changed the tilt of the Earth’s axis. Underground reserves lost 2 trillion tons of water between 1993 and 2010. A massive figure equivalent to 2 million million tons, enough to move the geographic North Pole by 4.36 centimeters per year towards central Russia. one to validate it Stady Posted last June 15 by Ki-Weon Seo in the magazine American Geophysical Unionanalyzed later in the article on nature. The axis of rotation of celestial bodies tends to remain stable, but “the movement of any mass of material on or within the surface can affect its rotation,” comments Ki-wyun-seo, study author and geophysicist at Seoul National University.

Effects on the seas

The displacement of air masses, in particular seasonal ones, also changes the inclination of the Earth’s axis. Differences that scientists detect by observing the relative location of distant celestial elements, such as quasars, the centers of galaxies. The latest study refutes the previous theory according to which melting polar ice changed the tilt of the Earth’s axis. However, calculations confirm that this is the colossal amount of water extracted from the aquifers. Most of this is for irrigation, with India and the United States ranking among the major users of water reserves. Water demand triggered enough changes in the Earth system, including land subsidence and water mass shifts, to be responsible for the 6.24 mm sea level rise.

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