Climate Change Could Affect Global Timekeeping氣候變化或?qū)⒂绊懭蛴嫊r

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Climate change is affecting the speed of the Earth’s rotation and could impact how we keep time， a study says. Global warming is already affecting global timekeeping， says the study published in the journal Nature.

Coordinated Universal Time （UTC）—which is used by most of the world to regulate clocks and time—is calculated by the Earth’s rotation. But the Earth’s rotation rate is not constant and can therefore have an effect on how long our days and nights are. Changes to the planet’s liquid core have meant the Earth has been spinning slightly quicker.

Since the 1970s， to correct for this， about 27 leap seconds have been added to the global clock， with timekeepers planning on subtracting a second for the first time in 2026. This is known as a “negative leap second”. However， the study finds that ice melting caused by climate change has partly offset that acceleration. Ice sheets are now losing mass five times faster than they were 30 years ago， meaning that the negative leap second change will not be needed until 2029， the study suggests.

一項研究稱，氣候變化正在影響地球的自轉(zhuǎn)速度，并可能影響人類的計時方式。（剩余1262字）