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Where did the North Pole go?

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Rajeshwari Ganesan
Rajeshwari GanesanJan 18, 2019 | 16:04

Where did the North Pole go?

Next time you are late to work, you have a legitimate excuse to give your boss — you lost your way to the office because the poles are shifting.

According to reports, Earth’s magnetic field is acting up and scientists don’t know why. The planet’s north magnetic pole has been skittering away from Canada and towards Siberia — driven by liquid iron sloshing within the planet’s core. However, the reason for such a rapid shift is yet to be discovered.

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The rapid moving of the pole has forced the world’s geomagnetism experts to update the World Magnetic Model (WMM) on January 30. The model describes the planet’s magnetic field and underlies all modern navigation — from the systems that steer ships at sea to Google Maps on your phones.

We were certainly not spoofing about your excuse to be late to work — the poles are really shifting. However, the changes are discernible only in the higher altitudes like the Arctic. For the rest of the world outside the Arctic, the shifts would go unnoticed.

The last update to the model (WWM2015) was released on December 15, 2014. The current magnetic field is based on that model that was to be updated after five years — on December 31, 2019. This is an unprecedented early update to the model advanced by 11 months.

During a check of the model in early 2018, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh found that the errors were severe enough to be over the threshold for acceptable navigation errors. “The error is increasing all the time,” says Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

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Geologists say that the pole is moving at about 50 km a year.

“It didn’t move much between 1900 and 1980 but it’s really accelerated in the past 40 years. The moving pole has affected navigation — mainly in the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. The NATO and the US and British militaries are among those using the magnetic model, as well as civilian navigation,” says Ciaran Beggan, of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh. “The fact that the pole is going fast makes this region more prone to large errors,” adds Chulliat.

main_earth-magnetic-_011719070728.jpg
Earth's magnetic field is roughly aligned with the spin of the planet's axis, as it is generated by the swirl of molten iron beneath the surface. (Image: NASA)

Why is the magnetic field shifting so dramatically in the past 40 years?

No one knows. Unlike the static geographic north pole, the north magnetic pole is in constant flux. Theoretically, it is influenced by the movements of iron-rich fluids deep below the Earth’s crust — the whole thing is still a scientific mystery.

While the movement of the liquid iron in the planet’s core might explain the shifting, it still does not explain a shift of this magnitude.

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Another theory is that the Arctic’s melting ice may be the culprit. Studies show that the amount of ice lost off the Greenland landmass was 267 gigatons in 2017 as opposed to 97 gigatons in 1996. As with the arctic icecaps melts, the ice retreats and the ocean currents change course. This reduces the salinity of the surrounding sea, thereby reducing the mass of the land — Greenland is not as heavy as it was. This means the pressure that is applied to the veins of magma pulsing deep below the Earth’s surface has reduced causing the molten iron in the core to move more rapidly,

Why is WMM so important?

While we are no longer solely dependent on compasses for navigation, an inaccurate WMM is not without implications. According to Scientist Will Brown of the British Geological Survey (BGS), the WMM is the standard magnetic model used for navigation by organisations such as NATO, the British Ministry of Defence, and the U.S. Department of Defence, and also by smartphone operating systems such as Android and iOS.

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Source: World Data Center for Geomagnetism

The arrow pointing which way you’re facing when you open Google Maps is due to a smart little device called a magnetometer that is measuring the Earth’s magnetic field. To make sense of this information, a reference model like the WMM is needed to correct the measurements of magnetic north made by your phone to the True North.

And now what?

The magnetic compass at home will continue pointing ‘north’, the ships will sail and the aeroplanes will fly — albeit a little off course. The US government shutdown has prevented the model from being updated on time — it was scheduled to be updated on January 15 in response to the data collected last year but had to be delayed because of the shutdown. NOAA hopes to release the newest version of the model tentatively on January 30.

Effectively, the only thing that happens now is that the geologists will have their hands and minds occupied for a long long time to come.

Last updated: May 07, 2019 | 12:48
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