It is common knowledge that for billions of years the Earth has rotated in the same direction as the Sun, but what happens if our planet begins to rotate in the opposite direction?
This issue was discussed at the General Assembly of the European Union of Earth Science, which brings together experts in the field of geology and space. The Assembly's program aims to forge new connections leading to long-term professional collaboration in the research community. This is a pretty rewarding experience for the scientific world.
Digital simulation of the Earth's rotation
Deserts will cover North America, arid sand dunes will be replaced by the vast Amazon rainforest in South America, according to computer digital simulations presented earlier this month in a 2018 General Assembly report. Dense deciduous landscapes will stretch from Central Africa to the Middle East.
In a simulation like this, not only did deserts disappear on some continents, but also a significant decrease in temperature during winter in Western Europe.
Promotional video:
Reproduction of cyanobacteria
Cyanobacteria, a group of bacteria that produce oxygen through photosynthesis, have multiplied in areas where they were not previously noted, and the Atlantic Meridional Inverted Circulation (AMOC), an important climate-regulating ocean current in the Atlantic, disappeared and reappeared in the North Pacific …
New climate models
During the rotation of the Earth around the Sun, our planet completes a complete rotation of the axis in the equatorial region. Our planet passes from the North Pole to the South Pole every 24 hours, rotating at a speed of about 1670 km / h. The rotation is carried out in the direction from west to east and counterclockwise when viewed from above the North Pole. According to NASA, this direction is typical for all planets in our solar system. The exceptions are planets such as Venus and Uranus.
As the Earth rotates, the attraction of its momentum contributes to the formation of ocean currents, which, together with the sea wind, create a large number of new models of climatic conditions around the world.
Digital images show big changes. For example, there is heavy rainfall in a wet jungle area or a lack of moisture in arid badlands.
“To understand how the Earth's rotation affects its climatic conditions, scientists decided to create a digital version of our planet, which rotates in the opposite direction, when viewed from the North Pole. This trend is known as retrograde,”said Florian Ziemen, co-author of the simulation to Live Science.
“The change in the Earth's rotation preserves all the basic characteristics of topography, such as the size, shape and position of continents and oceans. All this creates completely different conditions for the interaction between circulation and topography,”says Ziemen.
To imagine what the Earth would be like if it started spinning backward, scientists used the Max Planck Earth System Model to flip the Sun's trajectory to reflect the Earth's rotation and reverse the Coriolis effect, the force that moves objects across the surface of a rotating planet.
After all these changes were made and the model showed that our planet is rotating in the opposite direction, the researchers were able to record new indicators that would be displayed in the climate system for several thousand years. As the feedback loop between rotation, atmosphere and ocean began to function on the planet, scientists have given a scientific description that they are currently preparing for publication.
Increasing the amount of vegetation
As a result, scientists have found that the Earth, rotating in the opposite direction, has become absolutely green. The area of the global desert has shrunk from about 42 million square kilometers to 31 million square kilometers. Grasses grew in what used to be deserts, and woody plants appeared to cover the other half.
The researchers found that this vegetation would have absorbed more carbon than our entire planet.
The emergence of deserts in new places
Nevertheless, deserts have sprung up where they had never been before. They appeared in the southeastern United States, southern Brazil and Argentina, and northern China.
A change in the direction of rotation would affect the global wind characteristics, which would provoke a change in temperature indicators in subtropical and mid-latitudes. Zones in the West became colder as temperatures rose on the eastern borders and winters became harsher in northwest Europe. Ocean currents also changed direction, with the eastern borders of the eastern seas cooling the western borders.
AMOS simulation
In the simulation, the AMOC (ocean current responsible for the transfer of heat around the globe) disappeared from the Atlantic Ocean, but a similar stronger flow emerged in the Pacific Ocean, transferring heat to eastern Russia. This was surprising because previous research, which simulated the Earth's reverse rotation, did not record this change,”Ziemen told Live Science.
With retrograde rotation in the Americas, a vast desert belt has formed compared to its current position in Africa and the Middle East.
“But because AMOC is the result of many complex interactions in the climate system, there could be many reasons for this difference,” he said.
The researchers found that sea currents in the Indian Ocean, which changed their direction, also allowed the level of cyanobacteria in the region to rise, which they never managed to achieve while the Earth was rotating in its usual direction.
Intriguing questions
But for Ziemen, the greening of the Sahara was the most intriguing change to appear in the digital model of the Earth. “Seeing the green Sahara in our model, I thought about the reasons why we have a desert, but not in the retrograde world,” Ziemen said. "This is what makes me think about the most important questions that intrigued me during the project."
Maya Muzashvili