# North Magnetic Pole wandering away

#### Tom.G

Related Earth Sciences News on Phys.org

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#### davenn

Gold Member
No, the 2 listed links didn't appear to mention magnetic pole flipping.

The text from Tom's link ......
North magnetic pole's movement forces unprecedented navigation fix
Reuters

Article history
• Online: Jan 12, 2019

OSLO - Rapid shifts in the Earth’s north magnetic pole are forcing researchers to make an unprecedented early update to a model that helps navigation by ships, planes and submarines in the Arctic.

Compass needles point toward the north magnetic pole, a point that has crept unpredictably from the coast of northern Canada a century ago to the middle of the Arctic Ocean, moving toward Russia.

“It’s moving at about 50 km (30 miles) a year. It didn’t move much between 1900 and 1980 but it’s really accelerated in the past 40 years,” said Ciaran Beggan, of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, on Friday.

A five-year update of the World Magnetic Model was due in 2020 but the U.S. military requested an unprecedented early review, he said. The BGS runs the model with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Beggan said the moving pole affects navigation, mainly in the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. NATO and the U.S. and British militaries are among those using the magnetic model, as well as civilian navigation.

The wandering pole is driven by unpredictable changes in flows of liquid iron deep inside the Earth. An update will be released on Jan. 30, the journal Nature said, delayed from Jan. 15 because of the U.S. government shutdown.

“The fact that the pole is going fast makes this region more prone to large errors,” Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, told Nature.

Beggan said the recent shifts in the north magnetic pole would be unnoticed by most people outside the Arctic. Navigation systems in cars or phones rely on radio waves from satellites high above the Earth to pinpoint their position on the ground.

“It doesn’t really affect mid- or low latitudes,” Beggan said. “It wouldn’t really affect anyone driving a car.”

Many smartphones have compasses to help to orientate maps or games. In most places, however, the compass would be pointing only fractionally wrong, within errors allowed in the five-year models, Beggan said.
The pdf file in Baluncore's link is a very indepth and highly mathematical study/research into the predicted pole positions over
5 years from 2015 to 2020

There are a number of links on the net that lead to papers from professionals that are hinting that the increased and faster
wanderings of the magnetic poles is a prelude to a magnetic reversal (flip)

I will let you go do some reading

Dave

edit: fix typo

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#### BillTre

Gold Member
2018 Award
Does not answer anything, but entertaining and timely, from XKCD:

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#### Michaela SJ

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#### pinball1970

Gold Member
No, the 2 listed links didn't appear to mention magnetic pole flipping.

The text from Tom's link ......

The pdf file in Baluncore's link is a very indepth and highly mathematical study/research into the predicted pole positions over
5 years from 2015 to 202

There are a number of links on the net that lead to papers from professionals that are hinting that the increased and faster
wanderings of the magnetic poles is a prelude to a magnetic reversal (flip)

I will let you go do some reading

Dave

Thanks to you and Tom G

#### pinball1970

Gold Member
Does not answer anything, but entertaining and timely, from XKCD:
View attachment 237345
Will this affect any sort of migration? Birds? Insects? I am sketchy on the details but I would have though both a drift and the flip would do something

Mentor

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#### davenn

Gold Member
The magnetic movement is nothing new.

yeah but its wanderings over the last 1500 odd years is far more impressive ......

[ https://planet-earth-2017.com/wandering-poles/ ]

So if movement of the pole would damage species/ecosystems it should have been obvious by now.
ummm going by pinball1970's question ...

Will this affect any sort of migration? Birds? Insects? I am sketchy on the details but I would have though both a drift and the flip would do something
he was more interested in migration problems with changing position/pole flip rather than "damage" to the ecosystem

I couldn't help but believe that a total pole flip would totally screw up those species that use the magnetic field for migration navigation

Dave

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#### jim mcnamara

Mentor
All I'm saying is that the effect of geomagnetic reversal on migratory bird species cannot be massive. We would see population crash patterns in the fossil record that matched the black and white graph below. The reason we do not see bird population crashes: bird navigation is multifaceted. Any species that relied totally on magnetic navigation would have been very strongly selected against, multifaceted navigators strongly selected for.

Points:

1. I am not aware of any paleontological data supporting catastrophic decline in bird populations or drastic speciation during the last pole flip.
If you have support for these declines, please let us know.

2. Pole wandering is apparently the norm, based on geological data. @davenn posted a link about a timeline of past "flip" events.
Here is another one, showing the past 5 million years and more than 20 reversals :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
From the article ---

Black versus white: times during which geomagnetic polarity in black matches today's polarity, white is a reversal of that. Note some very thin black lines, short period events.

3. Bird navigation is based on one or multiples of the following:
Code:
visual -
star maps for night migrating species
imprinting
landmarks and maps of them
sun based
olfactory
olfactory maps
magnetic
magnetic field sensing

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#### BillTre

Gold Member
2018 Award
If the Earth's magnetic field decreased while flipping rather than going through a period where it was perhaps pointing at the equator, might more solar radiation reach the surface?
If so, this could cause an increase in mutation to exposed lifeforms.
Depending on how much of an increase, it could be lethal or just increase genetic variability of many species.

#### jim mcnamara

Mentor
AFAIK, decreased magnetosphere increases the loss of molecules and atoms from the atmosphere - essentially what happened to Mars.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-maven-reveals-most-of-mars-atmosphere-was-lost-to-space
So if Earth lost most of the magnetosphere, in 200 million years we'd look like Mars.

For living things ionizing radiation on the land surface becomes lethal, so biota surviving are mostly underground or in deep enough water to reduce exposure to UV & Gamma. Higher plants did not colonize land until the Ordovician. The assumption is the level of protection from UV light that the ozone layer provides did not become sufficient until then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_plants

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#### pinball1970

Gold Member
All I'm saying is that the effect of geomagnetic reversal on migratory bird species cannot be massive. We would see population crash patterns in the fossil record that matched the black and white graph below. The reason we do not see bird population crashes: bird navigation is multifaceted. Any species that relied totally on magnetic navigation would have been very strongly selected against, multifaceted navigators strongly selected for.

Points:

1. I am not aware of any paleontological data supporting catastrophic decline in bird populations or drastic speciation during the last pole flip.
If you have support for these declines, please let us know.

2. Pole wandering is apparently the norm, based on geological data. @davenn posted a link about a timeline of past "flip" events.
Here is another one, showing the past 5 million years and more than 20 reversals :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
From the article ---

Thanks Jim/Bill

#### LURCH

If the Earth's magnetic field decreased while flipping rather than going through a period where it was perhaps pointing at the equator, might more solar radiation reach the surface?
If so, this could cause an increase in mutation to exposed lifeforms.
Depending on how much of an increase, it could be lethal or just increase genetic variability of many species.
It is not an unheard-of theory, nor even considered “fringe”, but it has always been my impression that it is far from being widely accepted. It is consistent with the model usually called “Punctuated Equilibrium “, which holds that evolution is not always a slow and steady process, but is marked with sudden fits and starts.

There is a book called Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leeps by Jay Yoder, PhD from Illinois College Dept of Biology. The mainstream does not completely poo-poo the idea, but maybe just “poo” it.

There is some pretty great work being done at the University of Maryland by Dr Dan Lathrop…
http://complex.umd.edu/

#### bhusebye

Tesla's motor work would fix the pole flip. I know he would have the answer.

#### Baluncore

Tesla's motor work would fix the pole flip. I know he would have the answer.
Tesla would have been unable to fix the wandering monopole because he was bipolar.

#### Solomei

Beggan said the recent shifts in the north magnetic pole would be unnoticed by most people outside the Arctic. Navigation systems in cars or phones rely on radio waves from satellites high above the Earth to pinpoint their position on the ground.

It can very clearly be seen by sunrises and sunsets operating at different timelines of day/night. Wobbling earth is fascinating. Most satellites are able to be configured, but the observable changes are highly important.

#### Torbert

Growing up at 65* N and 150* W my compass has always been 30* off. This is as a teenager in the 1960's.
Currently it is 20* off due to the magnetic pole's movement being close to the same radius as the geographic pole from this reference point. It is really cruising.

#### alva3

It is cruising. This is the first time that the WMM has required an out-of-cycle update (not supposed to exceed 1 deg. RMS over each five-year lifespan, and WMM2015 met 1.5 deg. RMS in March of 2018; updated in January of 2019). What I find especially odd, is the fact that the westward drift began accelerating near the year 2000--the same time that the rotation axis turned to the east (south), and UT1-UTC began slowing. https://datacenter.iers.org/singlePlot.php?plotname=FinalsAllIAU2000A-UT1-UTC-BULA&id=9

#### Baluncore

The number painted on the end of airport runways is the magnetic bearing in degrees, with the least significant digit removed. So to land on runway 27 you should be flying 270° magnetic, which is west on approach by magnetic compass.

Have any arctic airport runways needed to be renumbered yet ?

#### Solomei

The number painted on the end of airport runways is the magnetic bearing in degrees, with the least significant digit removed. So to land on runway 27 you should be flying 270° magnetic, which is west on approach by magnetic compass.

Have any arctic airport runways needed to be renumbered yet ?
They repaint them regurarly. Often 15-20 lanes at the same time in Norway

#### alva3

Have any arctic airport runways needed to be renumbered yet ?
Yes. Generally speaking, the closer a runway is to the migrating N. magnetic pole, the greater the local magnetic variation will be at that runway location upon increased magnetic migration. Similarly, the further a runway location from the migrating N. magnetic pole, the less local magnetic variation those runways will experience. Consequently, runway renames are occurring pretty much everywhere--but especially in the Arctic.

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#### JBA

Gold Member
Is there any information in any of the above references about the location of the magnetic poles at the time of the initiation of the prior flips; or, is the distance of the normal movement of the pole(s) not sufficient to be able to identify that from the radiometric analysis of rocks.

#### Baluncore

Is there any information in any of the above references about the location of the magnetic poles at the time of the initiation of the prior flips; or, is the distance of the normal movement of the pole(s) not sufficient to be able to identify that from the radiometric analysis of rocks.
Magnetic reversals occur on average about every 125,000 years. It is now over 800,000 years since the last reversal which is unusual. Radiometric dates do not have sufficient accuracy to record accurate time detail.

Here is the old 27 at O'Hare wearing out while it is replaced with the new 28.

"North Magnetic Pole wandering away"

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