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Geological evidence reveals a staircase pattern in Earth’s rotational deceleration evolution
He Huang (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Observatoire de Paris), Chao Ma (Chengdu University of Technology, State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation), J. Laskar (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Observatoire de Paris), Matthias Sinnesael (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Trinity College Dublin), Mohammad A Farhat (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Observatoire de Paris), Nam H. Hoang (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Observatoire de Paris), Yuan Gao (China University of Geosciences (Beijing)), Christian Zeeden (LIAG Institute for Applied Geophysics), Hanting Zhong (Chengdu University of Technology, State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation), Mingcai Hou (Chengdu University of Technology, State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation), Chengshan Wang (China University of Geosciences (Beijing))
Abstract: The Earth’s rotation has been decelerating throughout its history due to tidal dissipation, but the variation of the rate of this deceleration through time has not been established. We present a detailed analysis of eight geological datasets to constrain the Earth’s rotational history from 650 to 240 Mya. The results allow us to test physical tidal models and point to a staircase pattern in the Earth’s deceleration from 650 to 280 Mya. During this time interval, the Earth–Moon distance increased by approximately 20,000 km and the length of day increased by approximately 2.2 h. Specifically, there are two intervals with high Earth rotation deceleration, 650 to 500 Mya and 350 to 280 Mya, separated by an interval of stalled deceleration from 500 to 350 Mya. The interval with stalled deceleration is attributed mainly to reduced tidal dissipation due to the continent-ocean configuration at the time, not to changes in Earth’s dynamical ellipticity from continental assembly or glaciation. Modeling indicates that, except for the very recent time, tidal dissipation is the main driver for decelerating Earth rotation. One potential implication of our findings is that the Earth’s tidal dissipation, along with Earth’s rotation deceleration, may play a role in the evolving Earth.