[LEAPSECS] What happened in the late 1990s to slow the rate of leap seconds?

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Sat Nov 14 04:38:42 EST 2015


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In message <CANCZdfrmzXooMfJ9dBX2fAs1t3YNryjX-gPC+DjkFBmW2Gvnrw at mail.gmail.com>
, Warner Losh writes:

>what about the effects of glacial melt? Can LOD changes be tied to that?

I did some math on that long time ago, and got a negative.

*) The ice is quite close to the axis of rotation

*) The melt water gets distributed over much bigger surface area than the ice.

*) The change in altitude is very moderate compared to earth radius

*) The mass is very small relative to earth mass.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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