The length of a day could be changing due to melting polar ice. A team of international scientists studied a 200-year period of weather models to better understand how climate change has impacted day length.

The new research suggests climate change is a bigger influence on time than studies have shown.

The speed of the Earth’s rotation can change ever so slightly, and it affects the number of hours, minutes, and seconds making up each day. The moon has always been a dominant force in pulling oceans toward it, slowing that rotation. As humans produce more planet-warming pollution, higher amounts of meltwater will flow toward the equator, changing the planet’s shape and changing its rotation.

If we don’t pull back on emissions and pollution, the length of a day could extend by 2.62 milliseconds and become a bigger factor for rotation than the moon’s pull. The changes, around a millisecond a day, may be largely unnoticeable to humans but can have an important impact on digital systems like GPS and devices that use precise atomic time.

Read more: Melting polar ice is changing the way the Earth spins and making days longer, study shows (msn.com)