Dramatic ice melt due to climate change may move the locations of Earth's geographic poles in the coming years, a new study finds, Live Science reports.

As ice sheets melt and ocean mass gets redistributed around the planet, Earth's geographic North and South poles could shift up to 89 feet (27 meters) by 2100 as the planet's axis of rotation changes, according to the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The shift could affect satellite and spacecraft navigation, the researchers said.

As Earth spins, changes in the distribution of the planet's mass cause it to wobble on its axis like a top. Many of these wobbles are regular and predictable—some are due to regular changes in atmospheric pressure and ocean currents, while others result from interactions between the core and the mantle.

Recent studies have suggested that melting ice sheets and glaciers could also affect this mass distribution and shift Earth's poles.

In the new study, researchers at ETH Zurich used both the movement of the poles from 1900 to 2018 and projections of ice sheet melt to predict how far the poles might move under different human-caused climate change scenarios.

The North Pole could shift westward by more than 89 feet by 2100 under the worst-case greenhouse gas emissions scenario, the team found. Under a more optimistic emissions scenario, the pole could still shift as much as 39 feet (12 m) relative to its location in 1900.