Is this the most outlandish claim for Climate Change yet.
Climate change is causing Earth's poles to DRIFT, claim scientists.
University of Texas researchers think that the Weather can affect the position of Earth's Magnetic Field, quote
Lead researcher Jianli Chen said that ‘ice melting and sea level change can explain 90 per cent of the shift’ and that ‘the driving force for the sudden change is climate change.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2524582/Climate-change-causing-Earths-poles-DRIFT-claim-scientists.html#ixzz2nfOOpb15
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2524582/Climate-change-causing-Earths-poles-DRIFT-claim-scientists.html

I put this on unthreaded, and HaroldW has replied.

Surely tectonic Plate movement will have a greater impact in terms of mass and therefore moment of inertia? I seem to recall a number of about 3cm pa for most plates. Then there's isostatic rebound to consider as rock is denser than ice. Quite possibly the Greenland Ice melt is an effect rather than a cause?

From our friend google apparently the average tectonic plate weighs forty sextillion, seven hundred quintillion kilograms (not sure what that is in Giga Tonnes but it's a lot more than the mass of melted ice), although this is reckoned to be a guess.

Why doubt it? Continental drift is irrelevant, unless you can show that it has suddenly changed. Assuming it hasn't (which seems safe), the sum of mass distribution changes caused by drift is likely to account for the earlier gradual movement of the pole. So if it wasn't continental drift, what did cause the recent change in movement of the pole? What do we know that has certainly changed in mass? Ice sheets. Any other things that might have contributed (migration, commerce, resource extraction etc, fracking)? Unlikely, they all sound too small. What is your theory?

I love this sort of story. If there was anything better to make the public say FFS and scratch AGW from its agenda I can't think of it. Dead horse, meet stick.

Chandra
How about the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami 9,0 on the Richter scale, suddenly the next year pole movement changes direction, now is that coincidence?

The shifting of the earth’s plates in the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004 caused a rupture more than 600 miles long, displacing the seafloor above the rupture by perhaps 10 yards horizontally and several yards vertically. As a result, trillions of tons of rock were moved along hundreds of miles and caused the planet to shudder with the largest magnitude earthquake in 40 years.

Give me some FACTS to prove it was coincidence, bearing in mind the similar 2011 event off Japan hasn't had that long to enter their data set.

Rhoda, yes it is always changing, that is what the report said. Thing is the direction apparently changed in 2005.

Sandy, plate movements after earthquakes might indeed have an effect. But why would they change the direction of movement of the pole? The plates didn'tchange their direction of movement did they (real question, I don't have an axe to grind)?

Chandra
Research why when your wheels are balanced (I assume like all good green members of the community you drive a Toyota Pius).

They put one small piece of lead on the outer rim and another on the inner rim often quite far apart this results in a balanced wheel. Then imagine that you drive over a large pothole and dent the rim and knock off one of the bits of lead. Your next port of call is to Kwik Fit Fitter to have the wheels rebalanced. Unfortunately for us there is no Earth Balancing Fitter so the wobble changes. This is the most simple explanation I can give you,

There is much evidence to suggest that a belief in global warming is causing mass irrational cognitive disfunctionality in the brains of scientists.

Here's a quote from Nature:

The results suggest that tracking polar shifts can serve as a check on current estimates of ice loss, says Erik Ivins, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. When mass is lost in one part of a spinning sphere, its spin axis will tilt directly towards the position of the loss, he says — exactly as Chen’s team observed for Greenland. “It’s a unique indicator of the point where the mass is lost,” says Ivins.

Sandy's earthquake idea seems to be the only alternative on offer here, but that fails in that it is a one-off. The axis has continued shifting towards Greenland since 2005. So why the skepticism? We have known mass loss in Greenland and we have a shift in the pole - a cut and dried case I think.

Chandra we're talking about a massive system with multiple inputs. As the article says the pole is continuously moving and changing why wouldn't the movement continue in the new direction? As I said previously there was a similar event off the Japanese coast at Tōhoku in 2011. I would expect that there may be a further change as a result, I've no idea what that change might be but I wouldn't expect it to show up in the data for 2012 but would be detectable if it exists in data collected up to 2014.

In both 2012 and 2013 there were two earthquakes of greater than 8.0 on the Richter scale. So there is a continuous change to the Moment of inertia of the earth due to these earthquakes. I remain totally unconvinced of the connection to Greenland Ice melt. What about the claimed ice melt in Antarctica why doesn't that come into the equation? It's the current religion to blame all on Climate Change/Global Warming/Climate Wierding.

HaroldW
I have to admit not reading the article, but my understanding of spinning objects is that in a steady state then the wobble would remain constant. For a single micro change the wobble would change and then settle into a new steady state. For continuous random micro changes the wobble would be continually changing. Melting ice would give a more smooth change than earth quake effects; from the Mail article they are claiming a step change in the wobble was caused by melting ice. So unless CC causes earthquakes then something else caused the change they are talking about?

Surely, if the ice turns to water or vice versa the mass remains constant or am I missing something?

How do they account for the annual Spring snowmelt in the Great Lakes region of N. America? In early 1979 we had more than three feet (I meter) of snow on an area much larger than the UK. It all melted by May. I live in Rockford, Illinois and witnessed these events.
Snow is not as heavy as ice but since it began accumulating before Christmas is was well compacted in February.
The severe drought of 2012 led to the loss of soil moisture to a serious depth over, again, an area several times the area of the UK. Did the American Midwest not lose weight? How many cubic miles of water was lost for a time? The 1979 snow and the 2012 drought effected areas greater than Greenland. Both were hugely unusual .and involved a lot of weight

John, the annual snowmelt does indeed affect the pole. See Polar Motion on Wiki.

Chandra
You didn't answer John's point, regarding equally massive random changes.
From your link
Major earthquakes cause abrupt polar motion by altering the volume distribution of the Earth's solid mass. These shifts, however, are quite small in magnitude relative to the long-term core/mantle and isostatic rebound components of polar motion
Which confirms what I said about the change detected in this paper after the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake; and that although Greenland Ice melt is mention it is not considered a major component (unless Mr Connolly gets wind of this discussion)

Do you really think it confirms what you said? Strange, I got the opposite impression. John's point about drought etc moving the pole is clearly true, but it will move back when the drought is over. In contrast Greenland melting is continuous. The lack of any mention of Greenland is not entirely surprising as the research is relatively new and presumably uncorroborated. And whoever maintains the page may be unaware of it.

Chandra
So where is Greenland mentioned here (quoted directly from your link)?

Major earthquakes cause abrupt polar motion by altering the volume distribution of the Earth's solid mass. These shifts, however, are quite small in magnitude relative to the long-term core/mantle and isostatic rebound components of polar motion.
The key words are These shifts, however, are quite small in magnitude relative

Isostatic rebound has its greatest magnitude after all the ice has melted. That is over northern Europe, northern Asia and North America. Greenland still has a lot of melting to go before isostatic rebound there is anything other than a minor component of a minor component.

Now if John's point is clearly true as you agree; is it detectable? If not then why is Greenland's?

It says the effect of your random earthquakes is quite small relative to the long term drift. So any change in direction since 2005 is unlikely to be your earthquakes. It doesn't mention Greenland, but the research is relatively new so maybe the page maintainers are unaware of it - or waiting for corroboration.

John's drought might well be detectable but it doesn't matter. It was transient. Greenland mass loss has been going on at 200Gt/y for a decade.

Chandra
What it says in the body of the text, judging by your answers you haven't read the article, and partly to the redistribution of water mass as the Greenland ice sheet melts,. Then in the summary Major earthquakes cause abrupt polar motion by altering the volume distribution of the Earth's solid mass. These shifts, however, are quite small in magnitude relative to the long-term core/mantle and isostatic rebound components of polar motion..

You think that 200Gt/y is a lot, however I would suggest that Isostatic rebound;It affects northern Europe (especially Scotland, Estonia, Fennoscandia, and northern Denmark), Siberia, Canada, the Great Lakes of Canada and the United States, the coastal region of the US state of Maine, parts of Patagonia, and Antarctica. Today, typical uplift rates are of the order of 1 cm/year or less. In northern Europe, this is clearly shown by the GPS data obtained by the BIFROST GPS network. Studies suggest that rebound will continue for about at least another 10,000 years. The total uplift from the end of deglaciation depends on the local ice load and could be several hundred metres near the centre of rebound. Source here. This means that Ice melting in Greenland is noise. Rocks are about 2.5 times the density of water, if we take the area of Scandinavia, the UK, Alaska and Northern Canada there is an area of 6mKm^2, if 0.5km rises 5mm in a year then a mass of about 7 quadrillion tonnes moving 5mm annually. A quadrillion = 10^15 and giga=10^9 so your Greenland ice is still just noise and would be very difficult, in my opinion, to detect.

Rather than just spouting opinion and taking others word for things that you actually go and do the calculations for yourself.

As I explained early on the Indian Ocean earthquake had an effect after which will take sometime, possibly years, for the earth to establish a new, for want of a better expression, steady state of drift.

I don't know whether 200Gt is a lot relative to the net value of uplift, but I do know that uplift has been going on for millennia and most likely didn't change in 2005. As for "spouting opinion" that is exactly what your last paragraph does. You have no proof of that - your only motivation for believing it seems to be that if climate science says something about Greenland ice loss it must be untrue. If the research tirns out to be untrue it will have no significance for me, but you seem to put greater store in it being false.

Chandra,
I'm saying it (Greenland ice melt) is noise, having looked at freely available sources on the internet and in printed matter I have found no evidence to the contrary. The Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004 seems the most likely reason for a change in the direction of shift detected in 2005. What I'm saying is that there are many possible reasons why the change may have taken place assigning it solely to to some very minor (0.007% of its total mass every year) ice melting on Greenland seems to be a very shortsighted approach. I have given you some of the possibilities and their relative values to the Greenland ice melt.

I just have one question for you to think about, you don't even need to answer. If, as is very possible, someone publishes a paper in 2014 which says the movement is related to some other factor such as the uplift of the Himalayas/proximity of Jupiter (or one of innumerable other things happening to the planet) then which one will you believe or will you be sceptical of both? Currently you seem to be convinced on the word of "experts" that the reason is Climate Change.