Earth is wobbling and days are getting longer — and humans are to blame

The length of Earth's days and the orientation of our planet are being thrown out of balance as human-caused climate change continuously alters Earth's spin, new research suggests.

Initially, these changes will be imperceptible to us, but they could have serious knock-on effects, including forcing us to introduce negative leap seconds, interfering with space Travel and altering our planet's inner core, researchers warn.

A day on Earth lasts about 86,400 seconds. But the exact time it takes our planet to complete a single rotation can shift by tiny fractions of milliseconds every year due to a number of factors, such as tectonic plate movements, changes to the inner core's rotation and gravitational tugging from the moon.

However, human-caused climate change is another factor that can alter the length of our days, and scientists are just starting to realize how much this will affect our planet's spin in the coming years.

Over the past few decades, the rate of ice loss from Earth's polar regions, particularly Greenland and Antarctica, has been increasing rapidly due to global warming, leading to rising sea levels. Most of this extra water accumulates near the equator, causing our planet to bulge slightly around the middle. This, in turn, slows the planet's spin because more weight is distributed farther away from the planet's center — similar to how spinning figure skaters slow down by moving their arms away from their bodies.

In the new study, published July 15 in the journal PNAS, researchers used an advanced artificial intelligence program that combines real-world data with the laws of physics to predict how the planet's spin will change over time.

Related: 15 unexpected effects of climate change