I’m watching Origins on PBS last night and they are talking about the movement of the north pole and how at its current rate, the north pole will be in Siberia in another 25 or so years.
Now, I knew that the pole moved some, but a hundred miles in ten years? I had no idea. Cripes, one more thing to worry about.
But here’s my question, how are we so sure that global warming and other such issues are related to us and our pollution. Couldn’t this pole movement account for at least some of our changing climate? The hole over Antartica? I mean if we were talking about inches, I could see there being no argument, but we’re talking about miles and we’re talking about the fact that the rate of movement has increased over the past twenty years as well.
Well the magnetic poles move because the dynamo that drives them is basically the fluid metal outer core, and fluids tend to have all sorts of characteristics that make them stably unpredictable. If you think about it 100 miles over 10 years is 10 miles a year, but when compared to the Earth’s circumference it winds up being 0.15 degrees a year.
Just so we’re clear on this, they’re talking about the North Magnetic Pole, not the North Geographic Pole. The geographic pole wanders by a few feet per year in a mostly cyclical fashion. The magnetic pole moves irregularly, over longer distances, in the manner that you describe.
It’s unlikely. I’m no expert, but I can’t imagine a connection between climate and the exact location of the magnetic poles. Any impact due to increased collison of charged solar wind particles with the Earth would be driven more by the intensity of the magnetic field than by the location of the magnetic poles.
I have never heard of geomagnetism/movement of the North Pole and weather being linked but then I am no climatologist either. It’ll be interesting if someone does show a link here.
FWIW, here is a nice set of pages on the North Pole and its movement. [http://www.geolab.nrcan.gc.ca/geomag/northpole_e.shtml]GSC - Geomagnetism. According to that page if the current movemtn of the North Pole keeps up it will be in Siberia by 2050 (they also note that the movement is by nature unpredictable). As it is now the North Pole is actually getting closer to the actual rotational pole (axis). Always bugged me as a kid that north on my compass wasn’t truly north. Made me think my compass couldn’t be trusted (hey…I was 8 or something).
That pic is exactly the one they used last night. I couldn’t remember if they said 25 or 50 years for the pole to possibly reach Siberia. Thanks for the link.
The wanderings of the North Pole, a phenomenon known as declination, has been documented as far back as 1436 and confirmed by European explorers on lengthy sea voyages, and that’s only in Europe. I presume the Chinese had a handling on the idea as well, and probably much earlier.
With modern instruments, we can measure the progression quite accurately but I’ve never seen any indication that the movements have gotten more extreme in modern times.