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Earth's Shape Is Changing - Becoming Rounder And Less Round at The Same Time
ScienceAlert • • science
Key Points:
- Earth is not a perfect sphere but an oblate spheroid, bulging at the equator and flattened at the poles due to its rotation, though recent studies show its shape is changing in complex ways.
- Geologist Christopher Kotsakis found that the polar regions are rising faster—doubling their uplift rate in less than 20 years—while the equator is sinking, making Earth's solid surface less flattened.
- This shape change is driven partly by melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica, which removes weight from the poles causing uplift, while redistributed meltwater adds mass near the equator, causing subsidence.
- Despite the solid Earth's shape becoming less flattened, Earth's gravitational field (the geoid) is becoming more flattened due to the redistribution of mass from the poles toward lower latitudes.
- The study underscores the importance of combining different measurement methods, such as GNSS data and geoid observations, to fully understand the dynamic processes altering Earth's shape.
