Warming May Be Making the Earth Flatter
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers say that global warming may be changing the shape of the planet.
Because it spins and is flattened by huge ice caps at the poles, the Earth is not round but oblate, like a slightly flattened soccer ball.
This thickening around the middle had been expected to decrease because the polar ice caps have thinned since the last ice age. But the Earth is more flattened than ever, reports JPL’s Jean O. Dickey.
A possible explanation is that glaciers in the mid-latitudes are melting and much of the world’s ocean water is being transferred toward the equator.
