Warming and Slowing the World

chrisleonard writes "We all know that global warming is supposed to heat the planet up, but did you know that it might also slow it down? According to a report from Belgium's Royal Observatory (as reported here by astronomy.com), if the days seem a little longer to you than they used to, it might not be just old age catching up with you. Would it be wrong to call the interaction of the world's warming temperatures and its slowing rotation ... a snowball effect?"

Comments

"More profoundly"?

[The Monster]

efuseekay writes:

is more profoundly affected by tidal locking with the moon than fluvial effects

While the story itself says [emphasis mine]:

expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade, corresponding to an overall increase of about one ten-thousandth of a second by the close of the century

Since the people who tend the atomic clocks have been adding at least one "leap second" each year for as long as I can remember (inserted as 23:59:60 GMT on 31 Dec, with the occasional extra at the same time on 30 Jun), it would seem that it would take tens of millenia before this factor is even a blip, much less 'profound'. The article closes with this Burning Question:

How will the diurnal rhythms of animals and plants be affected in coming millennia? Only time will tell.

Is there any animal or plant with a rhythm that can be measured in nanoseconds? If so, why are we not using them instead of those atomic clocks?

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[canadian_right]

One of the odd things about changing global weather paterns is some of the unexpected side affects. Global warming may decrease the temperature in Northern Europe by a few degrees by changing some rather major artic ocean currents. Warming would bring a major cold stream that is currently quite deep (and makes it farther south) to raise up and cool Europe.

Weather is very complicated. Global warming will not simply give us the same weather, but warmer. It will cause strange, and unexpected new weather patterns. Storms will tend to be more intense (high temp = more energy), some places will get wetter, some drier, some warmer, some cooler.

But all this is nothing compared to the Ocean's rising if it actually get warm enough to break up the antartic ice shelf.

And all xfiles people know that global warming is being orchestrated by a global conspiracy of GOOD guys to stave off an imminent ice-age!