Three Gorges reservoir and change in earth

Rotation:
We are familiar with the fact that Earth rotates once in about 23 hours 56 minutes and 4
seconds with respect to the stars. But the Earths rotation changes ever-so-slightly since
moon gradually recedes form the Earth. More over Mega Quakes and Tsunamis are also
consider as the factors to change the rotation of earth.

But it is interesting that the artificial construction like Three Gorges Hydroelectric
projects can also altered the rotation of earth. However, the impact will be extremely
small. NASA scientists calculated the shift of such a mass will increase the length of day by
only 0.06 microseconds, and make the Earth only very slightly more round in the middle and
more flat on the top. It will also shift the pole position by about two centimeters.
Three Gorges Project:
In terms of installed capacity, Three Gorges Hydroelectric project is world
largest Hydropower project which is constructed across Yangtze River in China. It
has total catchment area of 1.8*106 km2 and covers the river length of 6300 km.

The total storage capacity of reservoir is 39.3 109 m 3 spanning along the
length of about 700km. Such volume of water is equivalent to 39 trillion

kilograms in weight which is stored behind a Gravity type of dam of height

181m and axis length 2309.47m. The dam reservoir is on average about 660
kilometers in length and 1.12 kilometers in width.
This project was completed in 17 years of construction started form 1993.
Wherever, first unit was operated in 2003 after the closure of river and whole
project was completed in 2009, with 26 no of unit and with unit capacity of
700MW.

Moment of Inertia:
Moment of Inertia simply is the rotational analog of mass for linear motion. In other way it
can also be defined as inertia of rotation body with respect to its rotation. For the point
mass, the moment of inertia is just the mass ties the square of perpendicular distance to the
rotation axis, I=mr2. And hence more the distance to the mass, more will be moment of
inertia which ultimately is more resistance to the angular motion of body.

These are some practicle examples on how skaters speed up or slow down by drawing and
extending their arms.
In the similar way huge accumulation of water mass in the Three Gorges Reservoir, affects
the rotation of earth due to the same phenomenon called Moment of Inertia. Although the
changes are so small to measure but can be calculated.

References:
http://www.businessinsider.com
https://www.physicsforums.com

Umesh Dhital
MSC in Water Resources
Pulchowk Campus.