Seeing that more and more dams are being built since they are environmentally friendly (more or less), I was wondering if the weight mass of the water from these dams might have an impact on the rotation and angle of the earth? And if so, how would it affect the rotation and climate longterm?
In: Earth Science
Yes; any time you do something to transfer mass to a higher elevation, you are inherently going to change the rate of Earth’s rotation due to the conservation of angular momentum. Simply walking uphill is sufficient.
The trick with the dams (and particularly the Three Gorges Dam, which this factoid is about) is that the amount of water held up at higher altitudes is so massive that it actually produces a *measurable* change, although it’s still relatively insignificant.
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