{"id":217871,"date":"2025-07-14T19:05:52","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T00:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/human-constructed-dams-have-shifted-the-earths-poles-scientists-say"},"modified":"2025-07-14T19:05:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T00:05:52","slug":"human-constructed-dams-have-shifted-the-earths-poles-scientists-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/human-constructed-dams-have-shifted-the-earths-poles-scientists-say","title":{"rendered":"Human-Constructed Dams Have Shifted the Earth\u2019s Poles, Scientists Say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/human-constructed-dams-have-shifted-the-earths-poles-scientists-say.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Humans have built so many dams around the world that the Earth\u2019s poles have wandered away from the planet\u2019s rotational axis, new research suggests.<\/p>\n<p>Over the last 200 years, humans have constructed nearly 7,000 massive dams, impounding enough water to nudge the Earth\u2019s poles by about three feet (one meter) and cause a 0.83-inch (21-millimeter) drop in global sea levels, according to a new study in <a href=\"https:\/\/agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1029\/2025GL115468\"><em data-start=\"625\" data-end=\"655\">Geophysical Research Letters<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This drift is possible because Earth\u2019s solid crust forms a hard shell around a molten layer of gooey magma. This means that whenever a significant amount of mass is redistributed across the planet\u2019s surface, the outermost rock layer wobbles, shifting relative to Earth\u2019s molten interior. When this happens, different areas on the Earth\u2019s surface end up directly over the planet\u2019s rotational axis. As a result, the planet\u2019s poles pass through different surface locations than before, a phenomenon known as true polar wander.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Humans have built so many dams around the world that the Earth\u2019s poles have wandered away from the planet\u2019s rotational axis, new research suggests. Over the last 200 years, humans have constructed nearly 7,000 massive dams, impounding enough water to nudge the Earth\u2019s poles by about three feet (one meter) and cause a 0.83-inch (21-millimeter) [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":718,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/718"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}