The melting of polar icesheets (Greenland and Antarctic) has profound effect on the Earth’s rotation due to the significant mass redistribution across continent-ocean system. Kiani Shahvandi, et al. (2024a) have demonstrated that the melting of polar icesheets can explain the nonlinear shift in the polar motion record. This contribution comes mainly from the melting of Greenland icesheet, although the contribution of Antarctic icesheet is projected to increase in the coming decades.

Similarly, Kiani Shahvandi, et al. (2024b) showed that the melting of polar icesheets and specifically Greenland has the largest influence on the variations of length of day, as far as the barystatic processes are concerned.

References

Kiani Shahvandi, M., Adhikari, S., Dumberry, M., Modiri, S., Heinkelmann, R., Schuh, H., Mishra, S., Soja, B. (2024a). Contributions of core, mantle and climatological processes to Earth’s polar motion. Nature Geoscience, 17: 705-710, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01478-2

Kiani Shahvandi, M., Adhikari, S., Dumberry, M., Mishra, S., Soja, B.  (2024b). The increasingly dominant role of climate change on length of day variations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121: e2406930121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2406930121