The Axis of the Earth is currently moving “upright” in relation to its orbit as part of its perfectly normal “wobble”, known as Axial precession. It is moving at approximately 14.5 metres a year. This means that those imaginary circles around the planet, the Arctic Circle, the Antarctic Circle are both moving closer to their respective poles by that amount. Also, the imaginary lines of the tropics, Cancer and Capricorn, are both moving at the same speed towards the Equator. This is resulting in the position of the Sun in the sky is over the tropics for longer, and is moving slower between the two extremes of its apparent travel, resulting in changes to tropical winds and monsoons.
As a result, in the Arctic and Antarctic it means that the Sun is actually getting higher in the sky in the summer, meaning that it is warming more of the Earth’s surface at the poles as it has done for around 6.5 thousand years. The current angle at the time of writing is 23.26 degrees. The variation in the angle of Axis is from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees. (The full cycle of the Wobble takes around 26, 000 years.) This is one of the major reasons polar ice is melting and ice caps receding, although there are variations due to other Earth forces like earthquakes, volcanoes and tectonic plate movement.
As the wobble is about half way through this upright bound portion, it means the temperatures at the polar regions will keep increasing for about another 6,000 years, until the angle gets to approximately 22.1 degrees and starts increasing again for another 13,000 years to make it all cold again, but it has been doing this for over four billion years with no ill effect to life on Earth.
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