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
Of course.
It’s a pretty famous fun fact that the biggest dam in the world, the Three Gorges Dam in China increased the length of a day across the world by 0.06 microseconds. The primary reason for this was that water that would usually end up being stored in the oceans was stored at a higher elevation, increasing the earth’s moment of inertia a little bit.
0.06 microseconds isn’t at all significant in all other respects though, no climate impact expected.
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