Question

what if the earth stopped rotating?

Please answer whenever you are free

Answer 1

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At the Equator, the earth's rotational motion is at its fastest, about a thousand miles an hour. If that motion suddenly stopped, the momentum would send things flying eastward. Moving rocks and oceans would trigger earthquakes and tsunamis. The still-moving atmosphere would scour landscapes.

Answer 2

Answer:

If the Earth stopped spinning suddenly, the atmosphere would still be in motion with the Earth's original 1100 mile per hour rotation speed at the equator. ... This means rocks, topsoil, trees, buildings, your pet dog, and so on, would be swept away into the atmosphere.

Without Earth's rotation, there would not be two high tides in 24 hours because the two bulges of water would stay in the same location on Earth.

Let's assume that the earth didn't suddenly stop spinning (because intertia and conservation of angular momentum would do all sorts of "interesting" things that are deserving of a What-If answer), and stipulate that the earth slowed down gradually, or possibly that it was never spinning in the first place (although I'm sure this would have all sorts of other effects that wouldn't have got us to where we are...)

Yes, sea levels would change, but not necessarily for the reasons that you think.

Centrifugal force

Part of the bulge in oceans is due to centrifugal force on the water, but much of it is not. There is an underlying bulge in the seabed as well as the ocean. A result of this (and other variations in the thickness and density of the crust) are that the earth's gravitational field is not even across the globe, and where there is a stronger area of gravitational field, more water is pulled towards it and a bulge results. It is this effect that allows for the bathymetry of oceans to be mapped by satellites that sense the elevation of the sea's surface.

I am no geoscientist, but I imagine that this bulge in the crust at the equator is also to do with centrifugal force - but it would take a lot longer to go away, if indeed it did at all, than one caused just by water.

Changes in tides & ocean currents

If the planet were not rotating, the dominant period for tidal cycles would likely be related to a lunar month rather than to a day. There would also be no Coriolis effect, and these two factors would result in major differences to tides and to ocean circulations. As such, it is likely that there would be substantial differences in both short- and long-term elevation changes that are due to currents.