Climate change is making Earth progressively rounder, new research finds.
The findings are a signal of human-caused climate change, however, and tracking the shape of the Earth can help reveal just how much impact people are having on its ice caps.
Our planet is not a perfect sphere. Because of its rotation, it is a bit flatter at the poles and bulges in the middle. But the new study reveals that Earth is getting rounder at an accelerated rate, largely due to shifts caused by the melting polar ice caps.
This finding applies only to the solid parts of the planet; the ocean continues to bulge outward at the equator.
The study, published Sept. 9 in the journal JGR Solid Earth, used direct measurements from the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) to track the planet's shape-shifting over time. This system provides direct measurements, but there are limits in how it can be used. For example, there are few GNSS stations near the North and South poles and few in remote oceans because they must be deployed on buoys.
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