Many people doubt the fact that our planet gets affected by changes in groundwater levels, land shifts, or even the changing seasons. But the reality is YES! The Earth faces the effects of both of these everlasting major factors.
Our planet isn’t a perfect sphere
Our earth isn’t a perfect sphere
The Earth isn’t a uniform sphere, as identified in the 3D representation of the Planet’s gravitational influence. It has all sorts of bumps, bulges, dips, and depressions. These happen by mountain ranges, deep-sea trenches, and other geological features. There are some places where the Earth’s gravitational force is more powerful than other areas.Â
Every object existing on this planet goes through this. This is why landing on other parts of outer space such as moon or asteroids is so hard because gravity can vary from place to place. Especially for smaller objects, gravity matters a lot.Â
The changes brought by climate change
The changes brought by climate change
Dense locations such as mountain ranges and mid-ocean ridges attain a larger gravitational attraction than places with water. Whereas deep-ocean floors basin attract less gravity as water is less dense than a rock.Â
With changes in climate, water also shifts week to week, month to month and season to season. Many places are becoming shallower and shallower day by day, and some are facing so much rain they’ve started to swell. These changes make a difference in the gravitational fields of these locations.Â
When a satellite crosses through a higher density place, it accelerates itself a bit because of increased gravitational force. It then moves back in order to fly away. These things are extremely small and take tools such as the ones in the GRACE mission by NASA had. But all of these little things make an impact.Â
Conclusion
Melting glaciers due to climate change
Melted glaciers and harmful effects on the sea are making a negative impact on the gravitational force. The data collected by GRACE showed that 60% of Antarctica and Greenland’s total loss in Mass was due to global warming. The other 40% was due to an increase in the flow of ice in oceans.Â
The same data generated with the GRACE report claimed that in the past 15 years, Greenland lost about 260 billion tons of ice. Antarctica also lost about 140 billion tons. With all these global warming issues, the Earth’s gravitational force is also getting played with. So with increasing climate changes, comes increasing gravitational force changes.
