this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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I'm not buying it. I don't think the human race has the potential to move water in a manner where it would affect the spin of the earth in any significant manner.
The discussion section of the paper is an interesting read (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL103509). While I am not in a position to critique the authors' conclusions, they seem to indicate that their work is confirming other estimates of ground water depletion. So, I believe this is more about showing that previous estimates of 2,150 GTons of ground water depletion are plausible. They state that "neglecting groundwater depletion in the PM excitation budget leads to a trend that is more westward than observed."
In other words, they show that the amount of ground water depletion estimates by some climate models would be expected to have the same effect on polar motion that they have observed. Their paper doesn't specifically address whether this depletion is anthropogenic--that is an assertion made by the models they are testing through their observations.