"Human Activities Accelerating Earth's Spin, Prompting Time Adjustment"

Timekeeping scientists are considering subtracting a leap second from atomic clocks to adjust for the Earth's faster-than-expected rotation due to climate change, marking the first instance of removing a second rather than adding one. The Earth's rotation has been gradually slowing, leading to the addition of 27 leap seconds between 1972 and 2016, but now the melting poles are causing the need for a negative leap-second correction as early as 2026. This adjustment has implications for systems reliant on precise timekeeping, such as GPS satellites and financial transactions, and highlights the complex relationship between atomic timekeeping and our understanding of time.