Over the next few months, Earth is expected to spin slightly faster than usual, shaving off tiny slivers of time from our days.

On July 9, July 22, and August 5, the planet’s rotation will speed up just enough to make each day between 1.3 and 1.51 milliseconds shorter than the standard 86,400 seconds, as Live Science reported.

You won’t feel it. Your clocks won’t change. But the shift is real, and scientists say it’s due to the moon’s shifting gravitational pull. As the moon moves farther from Earth’s equator and closer to the poles, its gravitational pull tugs differently on the planet. That shift lets Earth spin slightly faster, like how a spinning top speeds up when you press near its axis instead of along the sides. With the moon closer to the poles, Earth’s rotation subtly accelerates.

This isn’t Earth’s first time messing with the clock. Back in 2020, it went through a streak of record-fast days. Then on July 5, 2024, it spun through the shortest day ever recorded—1.66 milliseconds shy of the usual 24 hours, according to timeanddate.com.

While most of Earth’s long-term rotation has been slowing down over billions of years, due largely to the moon moving farther away from us, recent years have been more unpredictable. Some of the variation is natural, like seasonal mass shifts in vegetation. “In northern summer, the trees get leaves, this means that mass is moved from the ground to above the ground, further away from the Earth’s spin axis,” geophysicist Richard Holme told Live Science. The more mass moves outward, the slower Earth spins.

But humans are playing a role, too. NASA researchers found that groundwater depletion and melting ice due to climate change added about 1.33 milliseconds per century to our days between 2000 and 2018. Even large earthquakes can have an impact. The 2011 quake in Japan shortened the Earth’s day by 1.8 microseconds.

Unless we experience a change greater than 0.9 seconds, though, there’s no effect on how we track time. Our clocks will still say 24 hours. But those tiny shifts build up over time. When they do, a group called the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service steps in and adds a “leap second” to keep our time in sync with how fast Earth is actually spinning.

Your calendar won’t notice, but Earth is moving a little quicker beneath your feet.