Climate Change Could Affect Global Timekeeping气候变化或将影响全球计时

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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.

一项研究称，气候变化正在影响地球的自转速度，并可能影响人类的计时方式。（剩余1262字）