Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumScience: Earth's North Magnetic Pole Moving Rapidly Away From Canada Towards Siberia
Last edited Thu Jan 10, 2019, 10:32 PM - Edit history (1)
Something strange is going on at the top of the world. Earths north magnetic pole has been skittering away from Canada and towards Siberia, driven by liquid iron sloshing within the planets core. The magnetic pole is moving so quickly that it has forced the worlds geomagnetism experts into a rare move.
On 15 January, they are set to update the World Magnetic Model, which describes the planets magnetic field and underlies all modern navigation, from the systems that steer ships at sea to Google Maps on smartphones. The most recent version of the model came out in 2015 and was supposed to last until 2020 but the magnetic field is changing so rapidly that researchers have to fix the model now. The error is increasing all the time, says Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations (NOAAs) National Centers for Environmental Information.
The problem lies partly with the moving pole and partly with other shifts deep within the planet. Liquid churning in Earths core generates most of the magnetic field, which varies over time as the deep flows change. In 2016, for instance, part of the magnetic field temporarily accelerated deep under northern South America and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Satellites such as the European Space Agencys Swarm mission tracked the shift.
By early 2018, the World Magnetic Model was in trouble. Researchers from NOAA and the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh had been doing their annual check of how well the model was capturing all the variations in Earths magnetic field. They realized that it was so inaccurate that it was about to exceed the acceptable limit for navigational errors.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00007-1
Crutchez_CuiBono
(7,725 posts)I also wonder...how far off the pole is towards Siberia now and if there's ANY correlation in the ice mass literally disappearing up there?
Should we see changes in our hand compasses??
underpants
(182,848 posts)Just kidding. This fascinates me. Will read up on it later.
blondebanshee
(353 posts)to the ongoing US government shutdown.