Climate Change Is Making the Whole Planet Tip - 0 views
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The Earth is a ball that floats in space, and the Earth’s surface—the tectonic plates that make up the land—are like a shell that floats on the mantle below. Just like the hard chocolate coating can slip and slide on your soft serve ice cream, the crust of the Earth can slide over the mantle. This is different than continental drift. This is the whole surface of the planet moving as one. The rotation axis of the Earth stays steady, the land masses shift around it. The idea is known as “true polar wander,” and its occurrence is a part of the planet’s history.
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The Earth is not a perfect sphere—it’s kind of fat at the middle—and changing how the mass on the surface is distributed changes how the tectonic plates sit in relation to the planet’s rotation axis.
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"Climate change is changing the planet. Yes, it's doing it in all those ways that you already know about: rising seas, rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, more extreme weather. But Climate change is changing the planet in another dramatic way, too: It's actually causing the entire crust of the Earth to shift. According to new research by Jianli Chen and colleagues, Climate change-induced glacier melt and sea level rise have thrown the whole planet off-kilter."