The Magnetic North Pole Is Hurtling Towards Siberia So Quickly Scientists Have Had To Release New Data a Year Ahead of Schedule to Keep Navigation Systems Working Properly

Earth’s magnetic North Pole has been wildly shifting towards Russia so quickly that scientists have been forced to publish an update on its actual location a year early.

The World Magnetic Model (WMM) enables compasses to point north and is used in navigation systems. Its latest update revealed the North Magnetic Pole is wandering about 34 miles a year. It crossed the international dateline in 2017 and is leaving the Canadian Arctic on its way to Siberia.

This is causing a navigational nightmare for compasses in smartphones, boats and for airport navigators as well as in some consumer electronics, and WMM was forced to update a year early in order to keep it accurate.

WMM provides a five year forecast of changes to the Earth’s magnetic field.  The US and UK tend to update the location of the North Magnetic Pole every five years in December, but this update came early because of the pole’s faster movement.

It had been hoped that the updated model could be released even earlier, last  month, but it was held up by the recent shutdown in the US government, which oversees the project along with the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Pole Shift: Evidence W... David Montaigne Best Price: $10.85 Buy New $14.53 (as of 07:10 UTC - Details) Turbulence in in the planet’s core, where the motion generates an electric field, has caused the field to change in systems described as ‘akin to weather’.

Airplanes and boats also rely on magnetic north, usually as backup navigation, said University of Colorado geophysicist Dr Arnaud Chulliat, lead author of the WMM.

The military depends on where magnetic north is for navigation and parachute drops, while NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and US Forest Service also use it. GPS is not affected because it’s satellite-based.

Airport runway names are also based on their direction toward magnetic north and their names change when the poles moved.

For example, the airport in Fairbanks, Alaska, renamed a runway 1L-19R to 2L-20R in 2009.

The World Magnetic Model (WMM) enables compasses to point north and is used in navigation systems and was updated to keep it accurate. The update, released on Monday, showed that the magnetic north is leaving the Canadian Arctic on its way to Siberia

Since 1831 when it was first measured in the Canadian Arctic it has moved about 1400 miles (2300 km) towards Siberia.

Its speed jumped from about 9 mph (15 kph) to 34 mph (55 kph) since 2000.

The reason is turbulence in Earth’s liquid outer core. There is a hot liquid ocean of iron and nickel in the planet’s core where the motion generates an electric field, said University of Maryland geophysicist Dr Daniel Lathrop.

Dr Lathrop, who who wasn’t part of the team monitoring the magnetic north pole said: ‘It has changes akin to weather. We might just call it magnetic weather.’

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