Mark Megahan
The latest location of the magnetic north pole has been officially updated. Those who use their phones to navigate around from place to place will be happy to know they’re more accurate. The latest readings note it’s “now closer to Siberia than it was five years ago and is continuing to drift toward Russia.”
North pole on the move
The spinning ball of rock we’re stuck to has a geographic pole at the top and bottom, along the rotation axis. Those don’t move an inch. The poles a compass points to for navigation are the magnetic ones.
They’re created by Earth’s magnetic field and are in constant motion. Once in a while, they even flip polarity. Just to annoy astrophysicists, who can’t figure out why or predict when.
Another thing that annoys the experts, the wandering north pole has been racing off in a steady direction. “Over the past few decades, magnetic north’s movement has been unprecedented,” CNN reports.
“It dramatically sped up, then in a more recent twist rapidly slowed.” Scientists admit they don’t have a clue to “explain the underlying cause behind the magnetic field’s unusual behavior.”
In general, the pole a compass points to is close enough to physical north and south for rough navigation. Chris Columbus didn’t know there was a difference. He still managed to discover the Bahamas, even though he totally missed the North and South American continents.
Today, pilots and ship captains use a fudge factor to adjust for the discrepancy. The adjustment just got an official update.
World Magnetic Model
Today, ship captains don’t need to rely on compass and sextant to plot navigation. They have Global Positioning Systems. Those all have the World Magnetic Model programmed in to them but only know the latest reported pole positions.
Developed in 1990 by the British Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “this model notes the established position of magnetic north and predicts future drift based on the trajectory of the past few years.” The latest findings show their guesses were close. “The forecast was very good and so the new model confirmed that we were not very far off.”
Every five years, the data gets an update to “preserve the accuracy of GPS measurements.” Along with resetting the official position of the magnetic north pole, it introduces “new predictions for the next five years of drifting.”
They’ve been tracking the position since around 1600. As technology gets more advanced, frequent tracking becomes more essential.
According to Dr. Arnaud Chulliat, “The more you wait to update the model, the larger the error becomes.” He’s a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and also likes to hang out at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information.
Every day, pilots rely on their model of pole behavior. “The way the model is built, our forecast is mostly an extrapolation given our current knowledge of the Earth’s magnetic field.“
