[Reece]

It’s hard to imagine something as small as we humans being able to shift something as massive as our whole planet.

From 1982 to 2005, scientists found that the North Pole was drifting slowly south towards Labrador, about six to seven centimetres each year. But in 2005, the motions of the North Pole suddenly flipped in three unexpected ways.
First, the North Pole chucked a leftie and started heading east, parallel to the equator. It’s still heading east. Second, the North Pole more than tripled its drift speed to about 24 or so centimetres per year. It’s still drifting at this speed. Third, the Chandler Wobble changed phase, and so far, scientists have no explanation for why.
But they do have a good answer for the tipping of the spin axis. Rapid melting of ice on land has made the drift velocity of the North Pole accelerate, and has changed its direction of travel to the east. This solid ice is now liquid water spread across the planet. We know where the ice was, we know where it’s gone – and the maths all fit with the observed changes to motions of the North Pole.
Since the mid-1900s, we’ve used satellites to accurately measure these land ice changes many tens of millions of times. Recent analysis shows that between 2011 and 2014, Greenland, Antarctica and mountain glaciers were losing about 600 billion tonnes of ice per year. (Most of the ice came from Greenland.) This was an increase of two to three times the loss rate between 2003 and 2009.
It’s hard to imagine something as small as we humans being able to shift something as massive as our whole planet. But we used global warming as a force multiplier.
We dumped billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, heating it along with the oceans. The combination of hotter atmosphere and ocean water then melted over half a trillion tonnes of ice, which flowed into the oceans. This redistribution of water shifted the north-south spin axis.
Why did both the Chandler Wobble and the spin axis shift suddenly, instead of gradually? We don’t know – yet. Perhaps it’s like slowly pushing a pencil towards the edge of a table. You push and you push and you push, and it’s still on the table. But then you give it just one more tiny push. The table no longer supports its centre of gravity, and it suddenly falls to the floor.
So if we push and push at the balance of our planet, it may well respond by throwing a real wobbly of its own.

From: https://cosmosmagazine.com/geoscienc...-axis-shifting