Shifting North Pole

 CLIMATE, EARTH SCIENCES, GLACIERHUB BLOG

Melting Glaciers Have Shifted the Earth’s Axis

http://geoscience.wisc.edu/geoscience/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/carlson_2008_nat_geo.pdf

“In the 1990s, the Earth’s axis underwent a major shift. It is normal for the Earth’s axis to move by a few centimeters each year. But, in the 1990s, the direction of polar drift shifted suddenly and the rate of the drift accelerated. The reason for this sudden change was previously unclear, but a team of scientists in Beijing recently published a paper that shows that the main driver of the change in direction of the axial shift was glacier melt caused by global warming.“

That cited publication noted shifts of the axis in centimeter magnitudes. The measurements assessed the response to removal of groundwater that altered the balance of the spinning top that is the earth.

It is noted that fifteen thousand years ago there was a more summer like climate, lush vegetation and a population of large mammals in the area that is now frigid Siberia. And the Laurentide ice sheet covered Canada and a significant portion of the United States. The volume of ice, and its weight is beyond comprehension. The North Pole and the center of earth's rotation lay within the Laurentide.

(It is my understanding that the North Pole, the upper end of the axis of rotation of the earth, determines the location of the Arctic ice mass -- not vice versa.)

When the cataclysmic celestial event at the time of The Younger Dryas melted a large portion of the ice, the resulting imbalance, as the meltwater flowed to the oceans, caused a shift in the location of the axis of spin of the earth. Assuming a new position of stability, the new axis allowed the margin of the Arctic to reposition, covering Siberia with lowered temperatures that changed the nature of Siberia to the frigid waste that it is today.