Why did the North Pole move toward London?

The Earth's North Pole is changing its direction to the east, approaching the original meridian running through Greenwich, London, England.

The Earth's rotating axis, with its location marked as the North Pole, is moving at about 10cm a year in the last century, heading to the Canadian Gulf of Hudson, along the snowy road running through Toronto and Panama City. This shift is due to the redistribution of Earth's mass when the crust is slowly rising at the end of the last Ice Age , according to New Scientist.

However, since 2000, the Earth axis moved 75 degrees eastward along the Greenwich meridian. Some evidence suggests that the shrinkage of ice in Greenland and Antarctica due to climate change impacts leads to this sudden change.

The Earth axis is pointing towards the original meridian.(Illustration: Youtube).

In the study published April 8 in the journal Science Advances, the scientists concluded that the change in the Earth's axis was also due to the effect of water redistribution on the surface of the globe.

"This is the first time we have strong evidence that changes in surface water distribution on a global scale also contribute to the direction of rotation," Surendra Adhikari, researcher at Counter-Push Laboratory. The force of the US Aerospace Agency (NASA) in Pasadena, California, said.

According to Adhikari, the Indian subcontinent and the Caspian Sea are losing a huge amount of water, pushing the Earth axis to the east.

The study used data from NASA's GRACE satellite to explore the relationship between the distribution of water mass and the direction of the Earth's axis movement from 2002 to 2015. The results also shed light on the reason for the Earth axis. move every few years. This fluctuation is also due to changes in the volume of water throughout the planet, Adhikari said.

"The precise understanding of polar motion and rotation of the Earth is a mandatory requirement for many applications ," said Florian Seitz of the German Geodesic Research Institute in Munich. Applications include GPS navigation system, satellite location and research on climate change.

Because of the precise record of the Earth's axis movement since 1899, scientists can use that data to map past changes in the distribution of surface water more accurately. Along with considering where the Earth axis is heading, the work could help to create more accurate weather patterns.