Melting glaciers due to climate change caused Earth’s axis to shift since the mid-90s

The latest research has that the Earth’s North and South poles have moved since the mid-1900s. They have been affected due to the melting of glaciers and other factors caused by humans, namely climate change.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2021

Polar wander is the motion of a pole in relation to some reference frame. It can be used, for example, to measure the degree to which Earth’s magnetic poles have been observed to move relative to the Earth’s rotation axis.

True polar wander represents the shift in the geographical poles relative to Earth’s surface, after accounting for the motion of the tectonic plates. This motion is caused by the rearrangement of the mantle and the crust in order to align the maximum inertia with the current rotation axis.

This is the situation with the lowest kinetic energy for the given, unchanging, angular momentum of the earth, and is attained as kinetic energy is dissipated due to the non-rigidity of the earth.