Worried about the magnetic North Pole sprinting towards Russia? Don't be, boffins say, it'll be back sooner or later Boffins think they have figured out why the magnetic North Pole is heading to Russia at such a relatively speedy rate. It's all down to two gigantic magnetic blobs of liquid iron hidden underneath the Earth’s surface, apparently. Unlike the fixed geographic North Pole, the magnetic North Pole shifts, and we've measured this …
It's all Obama's fault. The US used to have the best pole, the northernmost pole, it was beautiful. People come up to me and they say "Sir, north is up, that's where it belongs. Up is good, up is strong. And, I tell them we're going to make it strong again, Chinya will not get its hands on the North Pole. Chinya is East. East cause that's where they belong, like Marco Polo."
(Sorry, my brain started to hurt before I could work in an incoherent Santa reference. I'll go drink some bleach and try this bit again later.)
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"The data shows that the magnetic north pole will continue moving south for a while."
Am I missing something, but doesn't the ESA video show the magnetic north pole has moved CLOSER to the geographic north pole between 1840 and 2019, something I would struggle to describe as "moving south"?
We're also long over-due a complete polar inversion I believe. Always wondered if that was a slow (in human terms but still a blink of the eye in geological ones), progressive rotation or it would get to a point and suddenly flip overnight...
Always wondered if that was a slow (in human terms but still a blink of the eye in geological ones), progressive rotation or it would get to a point and suddenly flip overnight...
There's a wikipedia article on it which suggests that ~5000 years is a likely timescale, with large variations. Not overnight, though.
Magnetic reversals aren't terribly regular so (like volcanoes) they can't be 'overdue'. They seem to follow a broad pattern of a gradual dwindling of the global magnetic field over a few thousand years with the appearance of several local magnetic poles around the globe, followed by a flip and a gradual strengthening of the global field.
The duration of the reversal itself isn't known with huge precision, but anything between 2000 and 12000 years seems to be the best fit; although at least one paper proposes the most recent Bruhnes-Matuyama reversal about 0.781My was complete within 200 years.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100731030313/http://es.ucsc.edu/~rcoe/eart110c/Coeetal_Steens_Nature95.pdf
Though, just to make it more complex, the apparent duration of the reversal in any particular location is incredibly varied as it relies on issues such as the geomagnetic latitude and local non-dipole components of the Earth's magnetic field during the transition.
God I hated palaeomagnetism when I did my MSc - it's absolutely bloody brilliant - until it isn't. Though it was a damn sight more useful than the radioactive dates I was using which were very much 'pick a number between yesterday and a hundred million years ago' due to hydrothermal contamination. Ooops - I digress.
"Am I missing something, but doesn't the ESA video show the magnetic north pole has moved CLOSER to the geographic north pole between 1840 and 2019, something I would struggle to describe as "moving south"?"
It moved closer to the geographic pole until about 2017, and has now passed it and is moving south again, but on the opposite side. So it would be a bit misleading to say it has moved south since it's currently further north than it has been for most of recent history, but it's correct to say it is currently moving south.
When I puiblished this I was told it was climate change causing the drift of the poles, no way could the pole drift cause climate changes as only CO2 could do that.
https://adriankerton.wordpress.com/climate-change-and-the-earths-magnetic-poles-a-possible-connection/
It only shows the past century or so, where is the data showing the past 1000 years so it can shown whether or not this was true before humans could have been influencing the climate?
As it is, they can take two graphs that point upwards in past 50 years and claim "they match" but that proves nothing useful. They could produce a graph showing worldwide meat consumption and it would show the same upward trend so would they claim that movements of the pole affect the desire of humans to eat meat?
Doug_S, you need a reliably accurate way to measure the movement - and those have not been around for long. And over the sort of distances involved, positional and/or observational error are significant issues.
Which is why I find the man-made global warming(*) lobby's claims that sea levels have risen by an average of under a centimetre a year hard to believe - with the ocean in constant motion and satellites in constant motion, and changes in the atmosphere affecting the accuracy of the sensors they are using (radio, laser, microwave, whatever), they can detect changes of 0.7mm? They can't even claim to be using the ocean bed as a datum because that's in constant flux too... well, they can *claim* it but that doesn't make it real. (And before anyone starts - yes, the climate changes, it always has and always will, until the heat death of the universe. If anyone really thinks mankind can make that much of a difference by going back to the stone age, why don't they lead by example and go live in a cave?)
(*) calling it "climate change" instead doesn't make it any more true, or them any less a bunch of snake-oil salesmen and women. The human race and its effects on the environment could disappear overnight and the climate will continue to change...
All that's changing is the point on Earths surface, at which the Northern magnetic pole is focused. The overall strength of Earths field, as a whole, hasn't changed.
You can see that in the 2nd diagram, the right hand image shows the decrease in the Canadian 'hot spot', and an increase in the Siberian one, pulling the pole towards Siberia, but overall the strength is still the same as it was before.
Yes, they are also not antipodes (they are not exactly opposite each other).
Have a look at this site: https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/
Untick 'Isogonic Lines' for a clearer view, and tick 'Modeled Historical Track of Poles' to see the path the poles have taken.
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